There’s a scene in Michael Haneke’s film The Piano Teacher where Isabelle Huppert confronts her illicit young lover and piano student, Benoît Magimel, in the lobby of the Vienna Conservatory. After he blows her off, she pulls a knife from her bag and stabs herself, thick crimson blood being sopped up by her buttoned-to-the-neck pale peach blouse with matching covered buttons.

The 2001 film is about the fine line between sex and violence, erupting from a woman who is dressed in a long yet erotic blouse and floor-length skirt. And that is where the Irish designer Maria McManus comes in. Over Zoom, I tell her that her designs remind one of a “sexy librarian”, much like Huppert’s film character. McManus, 46, with skin that looks like a porcelain doll’s, chuckles. “She’s in there somewhere; that’s not necessarily what I would think straight away, but it makes total sense when somebody is seeing [my clothes] from the outside, you know.”