Spain's got talent - Telegraph Stuart Vevers and Lisa Montague, the British duo who set Mulberry on the road to global superstardom, have taken their recipe to Loewe, the luxury heritage brand based in Madrid. Will it taste as sweet? At the apex of any successful global brand there's invariably a binary relationship that combines a distinctive creative point of view with an equally strong commercial one: Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé; Tom Ford and Domenico del Sole; Miuccia Prada and her husband, Patrizio Bertelli; Burberry's Christopher Bailey has Angela Ahrendts. At Loewe (pronounced Lu-ervay), there's Stuart Vevers and Lisa Montague. The name may still require some phonetic explanation, but in its native Spain, Loewe inspires the same degree of reverence accorded to Hermès in France or Rolls Royce in the UK. In pre-crisis times, Spanish ministers were presented with a Loewe briefcase when they gained power. Even now, a Loewe printed cashmere scarf is a fail-safe coming-of-age gift. The brand's as Spanish as castanets. And like many national treasures, it's owned by foreigners (the French giant LVMH), and run by Brits - Vevers and Montague. Paris Fashion Week: Loewe autumn/winter 2012 Vevers and Montague previously worked together at Mulberry, where Vevers collaborated with Katie Hillier and Luella Bartley on the Gisele - the bag, among others he did, that helped propel Mulberry from its horse-and-hound niche towards an international platform. Vevers had also done a stint at Bottega Veneta, the prestigious Italian leather house, so he was hardly an ingénue. And Montague had worked for Cerruti. But while it's practically de rigueur to install Brits in a foreign house nowadays, not many get to head up a label as symbolic as Loewe. Delphine Arnault, daughter of Bernard Arnault, head of LVMH, not only installed the duo, she handed them the keys of the house. Vevers, a smooth-skinned 38-year-old with an almost Tintin-esque youthfulness, got there first, arriving in Madrid in 2008, a year before Montague. The first thing he did, apart from enrolling in Spanish lessons ("Still not fluent," he confesses with a slightly defeated air) was examine its most famous product. If you were seeking the definition of the quintessential classic, Loewe's Amazona bag would probably do it. First, there's its timeless, deceptively simple boxy proportions - Vevers reckons there are 200 components in all, many painstakingly crafted by hand. But it's the Amazona's evocative social relevance that makes it a rival to Hermès's Kelly bag, Chanel's 2.55 or Vuitton's Speedy. Launched in 1975, when Spain emerged blinking from the dark, patriarchal Franco era, it was the first home-grown luxury bag that offered function and status to newly independent women experiencing the novelty of travelling and working by themselves. They needed a capacious bag to hold all their belongings, one that would remind them and everyone else how well they were doing. The Amazona - discreet, conservative, with unimpeachably logical proportions - was it. And Vevers changed it. Top 20 spring/summer 2012 handbags Not completely - he lengthened the handles, refined the hardware, adding curves to the padlock, subtracting some of its bulk by making it marginally longer and slightly smaller, and softening the leather so that it became less rugged and utilitarian, but not so much it felt decadent ("Spanish leather is incredible," says Vevers, "very hardwearing yet amazingly soft"), and added the obligatory mini-sized playful version. It took him six months, but he succeeded. The Amazona mark II is functional, bling-less and quietly luxurious. It's only when you see the old and new versions side by side that you're reminded how much God, and classic status, reside in the details. Vevers's friend, Katie Hillier, calls it "a classic bag for cool girls." Yet it was a gamble for Vevers, let alone the brand. When I arrived, there was an attitude of: 'Can you design us an It-bag please, to put us on the map?' But I felt it was very important to get away from all that. I consider the Amazona more of an emblem. I wanted a bag that could evolve year after year. It had to be more than something you just chucked a load of bling at. Loewe's 'Arizona' bag, then and now PHOTO: LOEWE It was an astute decision, which plays well to the home crowd. The Amazona accounts for 30 per cent of the brand's annual 200 million euro turnover, which has been growing steadily overall, not only in the Far East, but at home, too. Montague believes that Spain's dire economic situation has made Spaniards appreciate design classics even more, not just for their perceived longevity, but because "people here are grateful for anyone having success at the moment. The fact that we've expanded our factory in Madrid and are keeping crafts alive is really appreciated. The respect for craft is central to Loewe's identity - as it is to Hermès and, increasingly, to brands such as Gucci and Louis Vuitton, which preferred, in the Nineties, to focus on their fashion credentials. While Loewe debuted Vevers's ready-to-wear clothes collection on the catwalk in 2010 (every luxury brand needs a catwalk presence, it seems), last month, the company opened a small, self-styled museum in Barcelona, where archive pictures of Ava Gardner are showcased next to 90-year-old luggage, a hologram of an artisan toiling on a bag and, naturally, current editions. Richard Nicoll designs mobile phone-charging handbag The company - originally a small leather goods workshop, founded by a collective of Spanish craftsmen in 1846 - was joined by Enrique Roessberg Loewe, an immigrant leather specialist in 1872. A fourth generation Loewe is still involved. Spanish passion and Enrique's precision turned out to be a happy match. It may have acquired a Germanic name, but by 1905 Loewe had won "Official Supplier to the Spanish Royal Crown" status, with impeccably constructed box-calf leather luggage and a nascent collection of It-bags and silk scarves. Despite the inconvenience of a civil war and 40 years of fascist dictatorship, Loewe thrived, opening a flamboyant flagship in Madrid in 1939. In the Fifties, it became Ava Gardner's favourite shopping haunt after Ernest Hemingway took her for some retail therapy in Madrid shortly before her break-up with Frank Sinatra. "In a way, those dour decades helped preserve the craftsmanship," says Montague. Ava Gardner, carrying a Loewe bag, with husband Frank Sinatra, and Sienna Miller wearing Loewe PHOTO: REX There's no resentment, she says, among the staff about being headed by foreigners. The bigger issue is about me being a woman. When I first got here I'd walk into a room and everyone would be looking over my shoulder for the man in charge. Chauvinism notwithstanding, it's clear that both Vevers and Montague - complete with her journalist husband and two young children - have settled into Madrid and are absorbing Spanish culture. "Madrid has a reputation for being quite staid, but scratch the surface and there's a vibrant party scene," notes Vevers. It's like the colours - people think of Spain and they conjure up a moody, Velázquez palette, but there's a lot of dazzling colour, hence all the colours of the Flamenco bag. And, by the way, what Spaniard would have had the gall to call an accessory something as cheesy as the Flamenco? But for us it's cool. Sometimes it takes an outsider to get to the essence of what can make the national international. For Montague, it was the discovery that a brand hugely respected in Spain had almost no presence in the US. We're still tiny there - that's what makes the potential so great. For Vevers, it was meeting a Buddhist monk - surely no possessions? - who rhapsodised about a Loewe Papelle bag he owned. "For me, Loewe's Spanishness is what makes it so unique and intriguing," says Vevers. The management might be international but the 200 artisans are all Spanish. That shows in everything they do. It's not delicate or light. It's strong and bold. These bags couldn't come out of any other country.