In the middle of the First World War, with the Gaumont production company on the verge of bankruptcy, Louis Feuillade found an unlikely formula for success: Les Vampires, a series of short comic episodes that brought a much-desired escape to the public. Each episode, lasting 15 to 20 minutes, was a new surprise, conceived at the last moment by Feuillade, who improvised the narrative moments before filming. For the viewer, this serial structure created a sense of almost magical expectation - described by André Bazin as the meeting between the king and Scheherazade, in which the tale enchants and offers a pause, a delightful interruption to everyday life.
However, the real landmark of the series and the cinema came only in the third episode, with the introduction of Irma Vep, played by Musidora, whom Feuillade met at the iconic Folies Bergère cabaret. Wearing a daring silk maillot suit instead of the typical cotton, Irma Vep inaugurated the femme fatale archetype, becoming not only cinema's first vampire but also the muse of an entire generation. For Louis Aragon, she was ‘the image of the heroic and adventurous woman’, a figure who captivated a youth limited by the conservative morals of the time.
Irma Vep redefined femininity on screen and embodied a new idea of eroticism in cinema. With humour, Musidora would later recall: ‘I became this vampire simply because they wanted me to wear a cotton maillot and I wore a silk one. And since I was, as the boys said, well-built at the time, everyone came to see the silk maillot.’ With this choice of clothing, the history of cinema and female eroticism found a new expression, a history dictated - definitively - by a costume.