Martine Sitbon’s love of alternative, creative figures seems evident in all her endeavours, a fact that can turn even a simple fashion story into a veritable layer cake of meaning. For A#5, guest creative director Marc Ascoli together with photographer Jean François Lepage have executed an exclusive shoot of Martine’s collection featuring Romanian-born model Irina Lazareanu, a girl whose talents lie not only in her powerful aura as a model and muse, but as a singer and songwriter also.

Citing Leonard Cohen as her inspiration to begin writing songs as a teenager growing up in Canada, Irina’s illustrious career has seen her collaborate with friends such as Pete Doherty and Sean Lennon on musical projects in the past several years, as well as creating her own soulful tunes inspired by bohemian artists of the 20th century like Joan Baez.

The production is a dark and moody piece that delivers brilliant chiaroscuro – a heady mix of light and shadow that showcases Martine Sitbon’s Rue Du Mail garments on Irina in an unpolished warehouse setting. Though mostly shot in colour, the images remain almost black and white, with occasional wood tones and one dramatic red backdrop. The formality and delicacy of the Rue Du Mail garments plays against the spot lighting and blurred focus, giving them an organic touch and a personality that assumes them into Lazareanu’s nonchalant, glamorous rock chick character. Just Martine’s kind of girl.

One of the most beautiful series in Martine Sitbon’s A#5 is a selection of intermingled artworks by Anita Pallenberg, Nick Knight , Jean-François Lepage and Stephan Aldrich, which blends with an odd cohesion of washed colour and organic form. Entitled ‘Animal Botanical’, the collection is filled with rounded, shadowed silhouettes, rich shading and a fantasy air. Anita Pallenberg’s drawing ‘anemone’ gives a floral still life the crawling, curling tendrils of a sea creature, and Jean-François Lepage’s wall of Repetto ballet slippers are stitched together, the shoes buckled and wavy – lined up like pores on skin.

Photographer Nick Knight’s ‘Roses’ series are extreme close ups that capture the construction of petals and the play of light on the delicate colours of this revered flower. These sit alongside British artist Stephan Aldrich’s collage work of 19th century woodcuts of peasant life and woodland animals that appear larger than life.

The entire mix is heady and potently beautiful, speaking an archaic language that harks to old artisanal techniques, celtic fairytale, impressionist painting and a touch of the surreal.