PARIS, Apr 1, 2002/ FW/ --- There's that feeling! It's there in that seductive charm that is searingly elegant though street-smart, sharp yet delicate. It's there in every polished detail of his collections.

It's there in the clean, contemporary lines of his atelier, and in the newly refurbished Avenue Montaigne boutique in Paris.

It's there in the website, bewitched with beauty that materializes, and then vaporizes, into a postmodern mist. Dior Homme, under Hedi Slimane, has captured the art of allure.

Hedi lives up to his reputation as an elusive perfectionist, though he was kind enough to respond to my questions in between travel to Los Angeles, Milan and New York.

With his six collections for Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche, where he began in 1996, and now with his third for Dior, Hedi Slimane has established himself as a formidable designer in the avant-garde of men's fashion.

His entrance into this previously staid world comes at a time when men are increasingly fashion conscious, investing more personal time in their own shopping, while spicing up their wardrobe.

As the French newspaper Le Figaro recently put it "they no longer need mama or girlfriend to pick out their briefs".

Just when the boxy business suit was giving way to more creative attire, along came Hedi Slimane like a breath of fresh air. Interestingly, Hedi sees himself more as a designer of menswear than the creator of the androgenous look with which he has often been associated.

"The basis of my work at Dior rests on the tradition of military tailoring, and on a certain idea of posture, and the way the construction of clothing affects the comportment. And just one detail: I was never interested by the idea of androgyny at Saint Laurent. It isn't a concept that particularly seduces me. Maybe it's just that I don't have a definition of menswear as being too cumbersome," Hedi told FW.

And it's just this free look that has found it's home, not only with celebrities, but also with a new generation.

From Karl Lagerfeld, Brad Pitt and Madonna to chic Eurokids, his clothes have an appeal. The latest additions to the circle are the emerging designer Zac Posen, and Tom Cruise who appeared at the 2002 Academy Awards ceremony wearing a black "grain de poudre" tuxedo, flat front tuxedo pants with a black satin band on the side, a white cotton shirt and black silk taffeta thin tie. (Designed for him) He was also wearing the Dior Homme AL13 sunglasses.

Though Hedi has never ventured far from his signature razor-sharp style, it is still fair to say that each new collection brings some new evolution.

Technically, the cut is quite different between the YSL and Dior lines. Out are the so-called 'feminine' materials of the St. Laurent years: silk, satin and feathers; and in are more hearty fabrics: wool, leather and cotton, with the addition of glossy aluminum lurex.

This austerity is both in keeping with the tradition of Christian Dior, as well as global sentiment in the wake of 9/11. More restrained: perhaps. Less striking: not at all.

One of the most beautiful of all the transformations at Dior has been the classic gray suit, refashioned into a genuine pearl in the hands of the new designer.

So, what about those guys waiting for larger sizes? Well, perhaps they may soon be pleasantly surprised.

"Yes. It's possible to keep the silhouette and enlarge the sizes, and if I could just go back to the idea of military tailoring. That confronts all different physiques in the same line. Anyway, there are already large sizes at Dior Homme. Curiously, my problem comes with the sizes (US) 36 and 38 which are not ordered as much in our boutiques and which run out at the beginning of the season," Hedi said.

The Avenue Montaigne boutique, just like the cliché image of Dior menswear, has undergone radical surgery. A visitor from yesteryear would scarcely recognize the present incarnation. Gone is the heavy, wood-paneled hunt room décor: the sort of place where you might expect to find a portly gentleman smoking a cigar, while being fitted for a tweed suit.

In its place is a marvelously atmospheric space of parquet floors, lacquered white walls and ebony cabinets, featherweight chrome racks, and above all, lighting. The walls, the displays, the changing rooms are lighted, not in white, but in white tinted lightly with blue, the effect illuminating the clothes like art in a gallery.

Architects, following rigorous specifications, created the new look to order. And the new look blends perfectly with the new lightness of both the Dior Homme and the Avenue Montaigne lines.

A state of the art boutique, the first in a series dedicated exclusively to Dior Homme, has just opened in Milan with a second slated for late this summer on Rue Royale in Paris.

As for the website, it is perhaps the modem that most clearly links Hedi's vision with the modern age. And just like everything else, he watches meticulously over the details.

"I work with two collaborators and I just love working on the site. I asked myself the question about how to express the universe of fashion on the net before beginning Dior Homme. Some people find the site too elliptical, but for my part, I love to highlight the navigation where the entrances seem really first rate," Hedi told FW.

The Dior Homme publicity ads in the print media do not list a single physical address, but instead reference www.dior.com, an exotic mirage woven from threads of seduction.

What the visitor will first see is a completely black screen, broken only by shooting stars. The home page is not a series of commercials shoved at an inundated consumer, but instead, a set of puzzles, a virtual labyrinth of reflections that exude a magic, almost erotic, almost divine: the one called allure.