Ever since Victoria Beckham climbed the formidable steps of her first Parisian runway this September, a certain air of mystery has filled her London ateliers. “It’s a powerful femininity that’s quite seductive and alluring,” she said during a preview for her follow-up collection for pre-fall. Her words couldn’t have painted a greater contrast to the pragmatic glamour that defined the first 10 years of her brand. Now, she is changing the conversation. Her spiritual move to Paris—with its haute couture appointments and avant-garde esotericism—is ushering in a courageous but confident paradigm shift for Beckham that was evident even in a commercial proposal like her pre-collection.

It’s all in the mystique: sculpturally, dangerously, strangely cut dresses and tops in abstract floral prints and dramatic cinematic colors, crafted in oscillating fluid wools or silks. Some were tensely ruched—part sensual, part aggressive—and others constructed entirely from circular-cut fabric discs that rotated erratically when the model walked down Beckham’s in-house podium. Little knitted tops were subverted in tinselling, so wrong they were right, and deviant mutations like a shiny trouser boot (“I ordered them in every color”) or a big bag adorned with the magnified chain of a men’s wrist watch (a VB signature) were nothing less than intriguing. Appropriately, she cited The Eyes of Laura Mars and Paris, Texas as influences.