Reign In Spain.(Loewe's Stuart Vevers)

Byline: editor: Sally Singer MARK HOLGATE

The 162-year-old Spanish luxury house Loewe has just crowned Stuart Vevers as its new creative director.

Since starting as creative director of Loewe in January, Stuart Vevers has barely drawn breath. The 34-year-old British designer, who relocated to Madrid from London, where he'd been in charge of Mulberry, faced the not-insignificant challenge of creating a collection to be shown in Paris only weeks later. And he had to quite literally grapple with making sense of how to translate his new life; Vevers didn't speak a word of Spanish and duly enrolled in language courses every Wednesday and Saturday morning. "They are blocked out in my diary for the next year," he said of the lessons squeezed into a schedule short on downtime.

So, on a rare morning off, Vevers knew exactly what to do. He ordered a skim cappuccino (yes, in Spanish) at Starbucks and made his way to the CaixaForum, a recently opened museum dramatically constructed out of a nineteenth-century power station by Herzog & de Meuron, with rusted-iron--encased upper floors added onto the original brick structure. As he had to be back at the Loewe atelier by lunchtime, Vevers spun around the intensely air-conditioned space and took in the show (Renaissance-era works from the Uffizi) before stepping back out into the bright noonday sun. He liked the building, and, as he pointed out in that calm, measured way of his, "It will be a good place to visit on a hot day."

Heat is something that Vevers is feeling right now. His debut caused a distinct upward shift for Loewe (pronouced "low-ay-vay") on the fashion world's temperature gauge--and with good reason. It was strong and assured, and made all the bigger impression because it was launched with little hoopla: sporty sable jackets; ostrich skirts with gilt chains threaded through the waists; and decidedly woman-friendly dresses confected out of lace and tulle, accessorized with monumental jewelry of chunky faux stones and industrial nuts and bolts. Loewe, founded in 1846, has had a long-standing reputation for its softly draped leather clothes and accessories, so Vevers came up with a rather luscious one-shouldered, full-skirted napa evening dress, and a few superpliable slouchy sack bags. "The rule was that we could play with anything from the past," Vevers explained, "as long as it worked for now."

The task that Vevers had to tackle really wasn't so different from the one that Messrs de Meuron and Herzog faced: Take something iconically Spanish, a fixture on the country's physical and personal landscape, and make it globally relevant, respectfully revealing something of its past while confidently imagining its future. It's not easy to take Spain's proud, elegant imagery and work it into fashion in a convincingly chic manner--it all can too easily slip into a tragic Toreadorables moment. (Legion are the designers who have met their very own Guernica when they started with the mantilla lace and flamenco ruffles.) At Loewe, however, the Spanish-isms work because Vevers took a more oblique approach, looking to the country's artistic heritage: Salvador Dalilike exercises in surrealism, with forties-style pumps that rest on lightbulb or screwdriver heels and Cubist-like folded panels contrasted with weighty industrial zippers that owe something to Pablo Picasso's early experiments with perspective and spatial dimensions.

Another Picasso, Paloma, was also on Vevers's mind. "You see more red lips in this town than anywhere else," he said, smiling. (It's true: A scarlet moue is as much a hallmark of the madrilena look as ubercoiffed hair and ultra-pale leather jackets.) One image of Paloma Picasso, discovered via a late-night Google search, made a particularly vivid impression. Photographed in the 1970s, on what looks like a typically ornate Madrid balcony, she is dressed in a simple black tank, her bare arms laden with ...