Dior Homme Inter-Galactic After Party (Fashion Wire Daily)

Paris - We got a large dose of pop futurism at Dior Homme on Sunday afternoon, in a markedly improved performance by its designer Kris Van Assche.

In easily the best staged show of the men’s season in either Milan or Paris, models marched down the gravel path of the charming garden of L’Observatoire, wearing Power Pop electric blue shades, burnished gold suits, belts with parallelogram buckles and faintly surgical shirts, for a posh French take on Kraftwerk.

Staged in a tent that suddenly opened to light the pollarded poplars that demarcated the catwalk and backed up by an excellent Space Age rock soundtrack by Justice, one could only admire this piece of slick fashion theatre.

Smartly, Kris largely stuck to the slimmed down Dior Homme silhouette, sending out sleek pencil pants, and taut leather jackets with vertical pleats. His sense of details was also good, like the horizontal chest high slashes in one-button jackets.

"I wanted to bring suits to a younger audience," the designer told FWD post show.

Plus, Van Assche had the guts to take a few risks with his tailoring, bringing the volume that has obsessed women’s fashion these past few years into men’s wear with splendidly cropped mess jackets with ballooned backs.

The Dior space cruiser did hit its spot of turbulence with multi pleat Afghan pants - an old Van Assche weakness - that looked ideal for a waiter in the Enterprise’s steerage class bar, or macramé white shirts and leather blousons that were cut and embroidered with lots of holes. They just about worked on the runway, but would flop in the real world.

But Van Assche injected the right soupcon of dazzle, earning a ripple of approval for a pair of sensational gold sequined jeans, randomly encrusted with bright stones and crystals.

"Rather wearable and with a certain panache," was Karl Lagerfeld’s view of this spring 2009 collection. Though when we asked the great man his view of the golden pants, he responded: "I’m not sure I would wear them myself, though I want to be perfectly clear that I could easily fit into them!"

Van Assche also came up with some winning accessories - notably, multi-lace high tops in posh punk black, dandy boxing boots in black and white, and Kubla Khan gold sequined belts, all ideal for some clubbing on Mars.