Julia Garner is among the big-name stars who appears in the new Pirelli calendar

Speaking about the calendar, Albert said: "When I approached this project, I wanted to do it in a way that was different from other photographers."

Albert wanted to create something "more interesting" than models "taking their tops off" and decided to take a cinematic approach to the images.

The photographer said he hoped to explore femininity in the post-MeToo era.

He explained: "I wanted to create something that was more than just a portrait of somebody - I wanted it to look like a film still. [With the Pirelli calendar] in the past, the idea was always to do an elegant sophisticated version of a pin up.

"But as that had been done dozens of times in the past, it didn't seem the right thing to take a bunch of supermodels down to the beach to take their tops off.

"It didn't seem to be the right thing to do that. And therefore I thought it was more interesting to do a cinema approach, to do four short films that the stills came from."

The calendar was officially launched at a gala at HangarBicocca in Milan, Italy, on Wednesday (05.12.18), and Gigi was among the star-studded list of attendees.

Albert wanted to create an elegant set of pictures and Julia admitted that being photographed for the calendar was a welcome change from her role as Ruth Langmore in the drama series 'Ozark'.

She said: "In 'Ozark', I look at myself and I think: 'Ohhh I look terrible.' I make myself look terrible [in the show]. These [pictures] are all beautiful.

"And it is weird to say: 'These are all beautiful images' when they are of me. But Albert has a vision."