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"June 29, 2003. On a warm Paris evening, a black Peugeot rolls up to Bercy, a slablike sports arena currently being transformed into a temple of postnuclear chic. The Peugeot stops at Porte 27 and leaves off Hedi Slimane, who enters the arena loose-limbed and relaxed.\n\nClothing racks, ironing stations and makeup tables with mirrors framed in lightbulbs now ll the vast acreage where hockey games are usually played. Trailed by his lieutenants Kris Van Assche and Sabisha Friedberg, Slimane moves through the passageways looking side to side, his translucent blue eyes the size of shooter marbles swiveling around sadly in their sockets. As he issues crisp greetings in French to the technical people hauling and checking equipment, he wears his considerable power lightly: The fine-boned melancholy coupled with ripped jeans and his signature hip haircut (long on top, buzzed on the sides and in back) creates an intriguing contrast\u2014sort of Camus as club kid. Striding toward the staging area where the catwalk is located, Slimane parts some heavy curtains and goes through, allowing them to fall in the faces of Van Assche and Friedberg, who exchange a wordless glance as if to say, \u201CThat\u2019s our genius.\u201C Never rude intentionally\u2014just very focused and always moving forward.\n\nGiven the thrills Slimane has managed to generate in a precinct of fashion not known for surprises, his Dior Homme show, which takes place tomorrow, looms like an event, a hot-ticket spectacle\u2014hence the surgical preparation. Throughout the rehearsal, the space is engulfed in darkness, the keypads on the cell phones in use around the room emitting the only light in tiny squares. Off to the side, Slimane and several others are huddled by a techno campfire otherwise known as the lighting console. Here, he and the lighting designer, Thierry Dreyfus, refine the cues, coordinating them with the music and the pacing of a shirtless 16-year-old with a torso as hard and narrow as a ask, who trudges down the catwalk maybe fifteen times. Every aspect of the show, from the particular black hue of the catwalk to the design of the invitation to the commissioned soundtrack, has been conceived over the course of months by Slimane and executed to the letter by his team. \u201CWe\u2019re not last-minute people,\u201C Friedberg tells me.\n\nEventually, the models\u2014or \u201Cthe boys,\u201C as they\u2019re always called\u2014straggle in to receive their instructions and also to walk through the show: There\u2019s Maximus, Christoffer, Adrian, Tristan, Mathias and forty others wearing army boots, Tevas, skull jewelry, jams, jeans with blown-out backsides, fatigues, nipple rings, headphones, bandolier belts, ripped T-shirts, tattoos and thick silver chains draped from belt loop to wallet. From Berlin, Paris, America, all are young and gaunt with jutting hip bones and snaking waists, stringy hair and ghostly pallors\u2014\u201Ca nocturnal complexion and mood,\u201C as Slimane\u2019s hairstylist Jimmy Paul describes the look. \u201CIt\u2019s gotten more and more honed. You wouldn\u2019t say beefcake, but you wouldn\u2019t say feminine, either. It\u2019s not camp or effete. It\u2019s sharp, bony and very natural, not affected: guys who just happen to have been born looking that way.\u201C\n\nSome were all but plucked from their skateboards. A master of \u201Cstreet casting,\u201C Slimane likes to find his boys in their natural habitats\u2014on sidewalks, in clubs. He spotted one on a tram in Alexanderplatz, in Berlin. Slimane and his assistant chased the tram until the boy got off. Another he found playing soccer in the park. He spied Sebastien, his fit model, at a rock concert. Needless to say, he knows the look when he sees it.\n\n\u201CThe way you wear clothes makes a difference,\u201C Slimane says. \u201CThat\u2019s such an important thing in fashion, almost an old-school-couture thing, but something that\u2019s never talked about. It\u2019s all about the person who wears it and how it\u2019s worn. The personality, the allure\u2014it\u2019s all about that.\u201C\n\nAlong with their extreme slimness, the boys of Slimane\u2019s choosing bring an essential na\u00EFvet\u00E9 about their own fleeting, sepulchral beauty. In the tradition of Bruce Weber and Gus Van Zant, Slimane is a connoisseur of postpubescence\u2014that slippery stage when a boy\u2019s physical development outpaces his self-awareness. \u201CDuring casting, if there\u2019s a guy who\u2019s too vain, Hedi won\u2019t choose him, even if he\u2019s really beautiful. He doesn\u2019t like that vanity,\u201C says makeup artist James Kaliardos, whose job for Slimane is almost entirely about skin: making sure it has that clean, pale, easily bruised youthfulness. \u201CBaby skin,\u201C as Slimane referred to it one season. For the most part, these boys aren\u2019t destined to be professionals, with all the ambition and guile that entails. \u201CIf they\u2019re too much like that, we send them away,\u201C says Friedberg. \u201CWe don\u2019t want that arrogance.\u201C\n\nThere\u2019s very little in the way of arrogance here as the sleepy, slouching boys are lined up and put through their paces\u2014assistants snatching cans of soda from their hands as they\u2019re sent out to the catwalk where Slimane is waiting, crouching in the dark, compulsively snapping pictures as they come. His short sleeves pushed up over his shoulders, a long scarf looped several times around his neck, Slimane gets up in the face of a model walking by and shoots him lazily, one-handed. This is for the archives\u2014his documentation of the mood and spirit of the show. (Along with designing clothes and furniture and every inch of every Dior Homme boutique around the world, Slimane is an accomplished photographer, with two published picture books to his credit.)\n\nThe rehearsal ends at a little past nine. In a striking goth-grunge tableau, the boys are clumped on the steps outside, hooked up to their iPods, as Slimane and his good friend Stephen Gan, creative director of Harper\u2019s Bazaar, slip into the black Peugeot. On the way home, Slimane, in the seat next to the chauffeur, laments the occasional phenomenon of a perfect boy somehow changing his look between the time he was discovered and the day of the show (capricious youth!). Christoffer, the current face of the Dior Homme campaign, actually showed up with a cast on his wrist because of a recent soccer injury. After some tense medical consultation, it was decreed that the cast could be removed just for the show and then replaced. \u201CWe always say, \u0091You have to come exactly as you are today\u2014the skin, the hair, the length,\u2019 \u201C Slimane says. \u201COne time two boys showed up with tans.\u201C He shakes his head. \u201CWe had to tell them we can\u2019t use them.\u201C\n\n\u201CThe drama! The drama!\u201C Gan says with a laugh.\n\n\n\nSlimane\u2019s precise aesthetic has served him well since he materialized on the fashion scene seven years ago, as chief designer of Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche Homme. At the time, the menswear situation wasn\u2019t pretty. Shoulders jutted and lapels apped on jackets that struggled to confer some sort of power on the luckless salarymen encased within. It seems everyone had discovered crepey Milanese tailoring and assumed that the projection of masculinity was a simple business of donning a big suit like so much gladiator gear\u2014then slicking the hair, smoking cigars and generally blowing hard.\n\n\u201CI was not at all about this,\u201C Slimane says in his plummy, baroquely French accent. He is sitting at a lacquered ebony desk situated in his spare Dior Homme office on the second floor of a nineteenth-century building in Paris. \u201CSo I thought I should work more on the idea that you wear a suit or a jacket because of the fun it can provide, because it\u2019s a game, because it might even have a sexual quality. Not status, or an idea of power. I wanted to develop a collection that wouldn\u2019t be scary or like a duty\u2014like you have to wear it.\u201C\n\nThe mission required nothing short of a radical rethinking of maleness itself and a wholesale dismissal of \u201Cthe forced, archaic masculine clich\u00E9s\u201C\u2014as Slimane describes it with visible distaste\u2014that had given rise to such dreadful clothes: ill-fitting power suits, of course, as well as baggy, poorly made casual wear that Slimane almost can\u2019t bear to discuss. \u201CThis thing of, Is it comfortable?\u201C he says. \u201CIt\u2019s what did so much damage to menswear in the \u201980s, I think. The whole idea of comfort was a great way to excuse a lack of technique in the atelier and the fact that they were doing the clothes really badly. They have to be well-made, and comfort is part of it, like in a very good car. You don\u2019t want to be in a bus, you know?\u201C\n\nAnd so Slimane set about reimagining the suit as something sculptural, sensual and Exacto-slim. It would have exquisitely fitted shoulders as well as high armholes and narrow sleeves that offered the subversive possibility of a garment that actually moved with the wearer rather than mugging him with fabric, that elicited mystique as opposed to blaring it like the horn of a Lincoln.\n\nIt\u2019s a rarefied aim, but that\u2019s couture. A mad art, to be sure\u2014even more so in womenswear, which sometimes finds sylphs working the catwalk in ludicrous aureoles of marabou. But this theater is born of a high purpose: In a sense, couture is the mission statement of the house in all its emphatic, unfettered drama that then filters down to ready-to-wear. \u201CThe tailored pieces, trousers cut like a knife, the narrow silhouette, the thinness of the tie, the covered plackets on the shirt\u2014there\u2019s a consistent language Hedi uses with design elements that look very Dior,\u201C says Tom Kalenderian, an executive vice president at Barneys. \u201CIt\u2019s extraordinarily modern and right for our time. Hedi has carved a following, and he continues to attract new customers as well.\u201C David Bowie, Mick Jagger and Tom Cruise are loyal fans, along with less prominent clients of Dior Homme\u2019s sur mesure, or made-to-measure, operation, wherein measurements and preferences are kept on file. Brad Pitt had Slimane create his wedding suit. Thanks in part to Slimane, Dior\u2019s couture business, which includes ready-to-wear and accessories, increased by 41 percent in 2002.\n\nBut how much does someone of his refined, conceptual leanings really care about anything as crass as sales? \u201COh, I care a lot,\u201C Slimane quickly answers when I ask. \u201CBut I want to sell without having to do corny things. When you are a designer brand, you can do a fake product full of logos, you know what I mean? Cheesy things that I really would die rather than do.\u201C\n\nIt\u2019s a fair answer from someone who is trend immune, whose process is more about conjuring than designing. Slimane never bases collections on obvious things like recent trips to the subcontinent or period costume he\u2019s run across in books. Nor does he sketch, particularly. Things just come to him, springing naturally from an exhaustive, scrupulously observed aesthetic that somehow marries asceticism and decadence, in the manner of his adopted city, Berlin, where he has a place and frequently spends weekends. But even that description probably goes too far for Slimane. \u201CPeople always want an explanation about everything, and I cannot give it to them,\u201C he says, \u201Cbecause I don\u2019t know myself. \u0091Why did you do a pair of pants like that?\u2019 I have no idea. I\u2019m not going to have a twenty-minute political discussion about the necessity for slashed, painted leather jeans. Basically, I don\u2019t know more than you.\u201C\n\nFor that reason, he has surrounded himself with a team that understands the vagaries of his process. Kris Van Assche, his Slimane-skinny \u201Cfirst assistant,\u201C is always on hand to interpret and execute Slimane\u2019s ideas and scour Western Europe for materials and technical innovations in the treatment of fabric when necessary. Slimane also has two personal assistants, an atelier of roughly eight plus two supervisors whose job it is to render his vision in cloth, and a chicly Teutonic gatekeeper in Sabisha Friedberg, who handles the unchic realm of public relations. All in all, a pleasant group, if a bit high-strung, given the precision required by their entirely humorless mission.\n\nThen there is the fit model, the 23-year-old musician Sebastien\u2014amiable, ferociously tattooed and stashed in the salon for hours at a time, available to be draped at a moment\u2019s notice. Slimane always works with live models. To him the clothes are a meaningless arrangement of thread if he isn\u2019t able to see how they move. In his view, the clothes have a mood, a character, a pulse that only a live model can activate. \u201CThe way you wear clothes makes a difference,\u201C Slimane says. \u201CThat\u2019s such an important thing in fashion, almost an old-school-couture thing, but something that\u2019s never talked about. It\u2019s all about the person who wears it and how it\u2019s worn. The personality, the allure\u2014it\u2019s all about that.\u201C Although it sounds absurd, I can imagine a Slimane show sometime in the future that features no clothes at all.\n\nIn their dark, ruined beauty, his designs exude sexuality\u2014low-rise, hip-gripping jeans treated to look like leather, chain-mail belts that swing open and loose, sleeveless shirts in see-through metallic-looking mesh. But it\u2019s also a moody, ambiguous sexuality\u2014a transgressive maleness you\u2019re not likely to see in beer and car commercials. \u201CIt\u2019s about keeping it for yourself and being really elusive about it,\u201C Slimane says of the erotic trompe l\u2019oeil in which he traffics. \u201CThat\u2019s much more interesting. I don\u2019t like anything to be given away too fast.\u201C Betting the teasing nature of it all, he decided to name the current show Strip.\n\nThere\u2019s a slyness as well in his take on formalwear, that notoriously squareball ghetto in men\u2019s fashion. \u201CThe problem with black tie is, the way it is cut, you can\u2019t see the difference between the butlers and the guests,\u201C he says. \u201CThey dress the same, no? That\u2019s a nightmare.\u201C As for bow ties, \u201CMost of the time they\u2019re not even straight. It\u2019s scary\u2014it\u2019s bad. I mean, it\u2019s so bad it\u2019s fun.\u201C One of his jackets is elegantly sectioned by the satin stripes you\u2019d normally see running up the sides of tux pants. It came to life after Slimane took a standard tight-fitting Dior suit jacket and literally drew lines on it, improvising patterns. Eventually, he made the patterns with satin ribbons, pinning them on. Then he instructed the atelier to cut up a suit jacket and piece in the ribbons. Earlier he\u2019d found some shiny black stones that he liked for their ability to reflect and throw the light, and he decided to add them to the jacket as well. So he tracked down one of the best embroiderers in Paris to sew a beaded panel into the back of the jacket. An edgy garment like this, which would make fine wedding drag for Edward Scissorhands, takes months to conceive\u2014each stage evolving from the one before, each requiring weeks of experimentation. \u201CThat\u2019s what we do,\u201C says Kris Van Assche. \u201CThe jacket you see there was not born in a drawing; it was born in live fittings.\u201C Even the standard Dior shoulder is the ornate result of trial and error involving several layers of material and horsehair and handwork that is done at a firm Slimane found in Italy. Incalculable labor, for a look that\u2019s supposed to be all about ease. \u201CThe way a jacket drapes, the way it falls, should have the quality of being effortless,\u201C Slimane says. \u201CIt might be a nightmare to make, but nobody should know.\u201C\n\nIdentied with a look so modern it\u2019s futuristic, Slimane burns the past like fuel; indeed, his disdain for historical allusion in fashion borders on contempt. \u201CThere\u2019s so much prejudgment in menswear,\u201C he says. \u201CPeople have such difficulty thinking about it in a way that has no past reference. They always think, \u0091Okay, this is a very \u201970s concept.\u2019 Or they see a waistcoat and say, \u0091That\u2019s the new dandyism.\u2019 Dandies are from the nineteenth century\u2014it was a different time, a different mind. It makes no sense today. That\u2019s a joke.\u201C Emphasizing the point with a degree of finality, Slimane says, \u201CI have no reference to anything.\u201C\n\nEven his concept for the Dior Homme offices, where he spends the better part of his days, conveys a clear fetish for fresh starts. His desk is long and narrow like a refectory table and free of scribbles, pictures and Post-its. Just some black pens and steel gray pencils\u2014sans erasers and sleek to the touch with rows of tiny raised gripping dots on the barrel. (In Slimane\u2019s world, even the pencils must yield to his aesthetic.) In the large salon next to his office, where fittings take place, the panes of watery old glass set in hardware-heavy French doors are a strange backdrop to the mod mirror that pivots on a fulcrum in the center of the room. The clutter-allergic Slimane has made the room a blank slate, a sterile laboratory; were they a tad more fashionable, white coats and hairnets wouldn\u2019t seem out of place. The day I visit, an incessant techno-pulse flows from the Slimane-designed bank of recessed black speakers that runs the length of the salon overhead, as if no moment in life is too casual or mundane to be staged, lit and scored. An assistant emerges through a hidden panel to bring him his espresso in a small glass cup.\n\nBut then what of the strangely curvaceous, suspiciously dated white chair at the far end of the room? As it happens, it\u2019s Slimane\u2019s adaptation of a chair once owned by Monsieur Dior. Slimane keeps it in the salon as an homage. As he once said, \u201CI like to think of him being here while I work.\u201C Similarly, the laminated salon walls are painted \u201CDior gray.\u201C Slimane is old-school perhaps only when it comes to the rigorous ethic of couture: Although the name Dior is suggestive of museum-grade tradition, his respect for the house that Dior built runs deep. Even the labels inside the clothes are that fabled shade of gray, tacked in the corners by an elegant stitch designed by Slimane. At the neck of some jackets is a tiny loop of tulle, a fabric of which Dior made legendary, billowing use. This too is an homage, albeit one so infinitesimal you wonder if Slimane isn\u2019t being a little ironic. Then again, with couture, the details are everything.\n\n\n\nIf there is something awe-inspiring about Slimane\u2019s current dominance in menswear, his rise is even more so. Only a decade ago, he didn\u2019t much care for fashion\u2014in fact, he found it sort of shallow. \u201CThere are so many bad reasons why people go into fashion,\u201C Slimane says, \u201Cso many wrong ideas about glamour, about status.\u201C Although his mother was a dressmaker who brought him along to fabric stores when he was a boy, Slimane was more intrigued by things like journalism, international relations and art direction. And yet his aesthetic was already in place. \u201CI remember when we were 20 or 21 on a beach holiday, and he would talk about the right cut for a pair of khaki shorts and why it was right,\u201C says Stephen Gan. \u201CHe was very, very, very specific about the way he saw everything. Anything he\u2019d let into his home or put on his own back had to be just right.\u201C\n\nIn 1993, 24 years old and in need of work, Slimane took a job as an assistant to a designer and showed a air for casting, drawing the attention of Jean-Jacques Picart, a press agent and player in the Paris fashion scene. \u201CAlready he had a vision,\u201C says Picart\u2014\u201Cnot about clothes but about allure.\u201C Picart hired him to assist on a centennial project at Louis Vuitton in which the company\u2019s monogram would be reconceived by five outside designers. Slimane\u2019s job was to be the go-between, a task requiring great tact and taste. His success on that project led Picart to recommend him for a first-assistant position at Saint Laurent, where menswear had been faltering. And it was here that \u201Call Hedi\u2019s talent blew up,\u201C as Picart puts it. \u201CIt was really obvious to Mr. Berg\u00E9 [Pierre Berg\u00E9, Yves Saint Laurent\u2019s longtime business partner] that Hedi deserved more. It was his destiny.\u201C At 27, he was offered the top menswear job, in which he pioneered a sharp new silhouette that drew on the elegant essence of Saint Laurent, winning reviews that credited him with rejuvenating that legendary house.\n\nThen some unlovely conglomerate intrigue: In 1999, Saint Laurent ready-to-wear was overtaken by the omnivorous Gucci Group, which would effectively install swaggering Tom Ford as Slimane\u2019s boss\u2014an untenable prospect for a singular, very French talent like Slimane. (As Picart puts it, \u201CIn the sky, there are not two suns. There is space for only one.\u201C) Eventually, Slimane joined Dior, a soign\u00E9 brand that has somehow maintained a boutiquey whiff of independence despite being owned by Gucci\u2019s nemesis, LVMH. Delicious fodder for the trades, but even better for Slimane, given that Dior was rich in tradition in every area except menswear, thus allowing him to benefit from the house\u2019s couture legacy and yet still build an atelier of his own. Dior came to value Slimane so highly, the company granted him nonexclusive status last summer: Now he can design what he wants, wherever he wants, in addition to his work at Dior\u2014an unheard-of arrangement. But that\u2019s the way the industry feels about Hedi Slimane. Although Monsieur Saint Laurent himself didn\u2019t attend Tom Ford\u2019s first show at Saint Laurent, he came out for Slimane\u2019s debut at Dior, providing the most dramatic, hotly deconstructed fashion moment in recent memory when, at show\u2019s end, he led the standing ovation.\n\nBecause Slimane\u2019s shows aren\u2019t just shows. \u201CThey\u2019re performance art,\u201C says Barneys\u2019 Tom Kalenderian, \u201Cand the clothes are part of the act. In motion, sound, smell, light\u2014in every one of your senses, you feel Dior by Hedi Slimane.\u201C\n\n\n\nJune 30, 2003. Showtime. I ask Slimane if perhaps I could ride with him to the venue and witness the excitement of the moments leading up. You\u2019d think I\u2019d suggested we go buy some clip-on ties at Wal-Mart. Of course Slimane is gracious in refusing me, if slightly nonplussed: He brings an impregnable and solitary purity to his rituals, caring not at all for posses and fanfare, never feeling anything as pitiably human as preshow jitters. I\u2019m not even sure he experiences hunger; the only thing I ever saw pass his lips was some sort of Euro Chiclet. It\u2019s easy to picture him sleeping on a slab: According to friends, his Paris apartment is as sleek, clean and minimal as you\u2019d imagine. But Slimane is mortal, Stephen Gan confirms\u2014\u201Ca wonderful, caring person who has his escape route on the night train to Berlin because he needs to leave the fashion world to refill. So that makes me think he\u2019s real and like the rest of us.\u201C And yet he\u2019s very private, possessed of a lunar cool and a phlegmatic ability to walk away that only intensies his mystique and his worth. Letting me watch the rehearsal and be backstage during the show itself were unprecedented concessions on Slimane\u2019s part\u2014indeed, it was a thrill to receive my Slimane-designed backstage bracelet, which looks like leather threads tied to a tiny cock ring.\n\nBefore the show, an army of gamines wearing infinite variations on black are sitting on the steps outside Porte 27, chatting in French and smoking cigarettes\u2014the dressing assistants. Inside, various models are drifting past the catering tables laden with food for the skinny\u2014green salads, cherries and liters of Vittel\u2014toward the makeup area. One in a CBGB T-shirt is doing skateboard pirouettes in the middle of the room; another, wearing pants with the haunches ripped out, revealing black briefs underneath, sits down at a makeup table so Jimmy Paul can apply some goop to his hair, which happens to be blond with a skunk stripe up the back.\n\n\u201CIt\u2019s so boring here!\u201C the skateboarder says to Sabisha Friedberg, who\u2019s in a black Dior suit. \u201CYou should get a PlayStation and some sofas. It wouldn\u2019t cost that much.\u2026\u201C\n\n\u201CPoor models,\u201C Friedberg says with a smile and a slight roll of her ultralight, Vincent Gallo eyes. \u201CYou must suffer for beauty.\u201C\n\nThe area between makeup and the stage is the cabine, where seamstresses, pressers and dressers are waiting, as are racks of clothes and tall leather trainers with their laces loosened and their tongues stretched back. Photographs dangling from the hangers depict each look with its complement of curious accessories: shiny black hankies that hang from a belt loop in back, finger clips with long silver dangles, leather wallets meant to be worn around the biceps and, for the finale, long tangles of those black beads Slimane likes so much that will sling and clack and play havoc with the light. Some boys wander in and start peeling off their clothes.\n\nAs the dressing commences, the transformative power of fashion takes over: Suddenly, this former slacker convention has become a casting call for The Matrix, the clothes draping sleekly, fiercely, about all the lovely bones in the room. Then the boys are lined up in their proper order, and a woman with a lint roller walks through. James Kaliardos approaches a model with a tiny eyebrow brush. Two people rub lotion into another boy\u2019s arms. \u201CQuelqu\u2019un a besoin?\u201C says a woman who\u2019s holding up a pair of trimming scissors, searching for stray threads.\n\nNow it\u2019s Slimane\u2019s turn to check the troops. He approaches the boy with the skunk stripe and crunches his hair in his fist. Then he strategically untucks the shirt of another. Pushing up the knot of a third boy\u2019s necktie, he looks like he\u2019s readying his kid brother for the prom. As Slimane goes down the line, he smiles at the boys, brushing the hair from their shoulders and patting each reassuringly on the back before moving on to the next.\n\n\u201CPr\u00EAt \u00E0 commencer?\u201C he says softly to a few of them.\n\nOn the bleachers painted black lining the catwalk, the international fashion elite is starting to fidget, given that the show is almost an hour late. And in an instant, the room goes dark as the initial discordant, spidery strains of the soundtrack creep through the ten casket-size speakers suspended from the ceiling. At the same time, six bloodred U-shaped lasers that extend from catwalk to ceiling light up, spurring gasps and applause. Slimane always begins his show with some ash of red. It\u2019s his way of saying, \u201CHere we go.\u201C\n\nAnd then from the soundtrack: I wanna make love all over this room!\u2014a louche cri de coeur that summons the first boy, who struts out in a Spencer jacket with a snakeskin lapel to a beat so loud it shakes the meat on your shins, out past twenty-one rectangular mirrors mounted to the back wall that swivel pneumatically as if to watch the model as he goes. Then, a mirthless parade of pulverized jeans, studded belts, metallic-looking fabrics and a calf-length white leather coat with narrow pleats molding the shoulders\u2014an unlikely though heartfelt nod to Dior, who very much liked working with pleats.\n\nUpon each model\u2019s return backstage, the sunken-cheek cool of the catwalk vanishes as belts are undone, neckties are pulled and aviator shades are grabbed from faces that are swiped midstride with a makeup sponge. Only Slimane is relaxed, allowing himself a subtle thrust and shimmy to the beat while glancing at the show on a monitor, occasionally retying a belt before sending out the next boy. Then Kris Van Assche appears, his face contorted in panic as he literally jumps in the air, issuing a silent scream while beckoning the boys with both arms. It is time for the finale, and yet a long beaded strand is caught on one model\u2019s jacket. Crisis! Luckily, the woman with the trimming scissors materializes just in time.\n\nAnd then: The battalion of boys draped in beads flows out. And as it does, the rectangular mirrors on the wall suddenly flip to reveal their backsides, which have surfaces of mirrored tiles. Disco tombstones is what they look like, swiveling around, shooting silver light through the room like skeleton fingers raking the void, groping blindly for boys whose sparkling black beads bounce against their naked chests and swing and shine like wet webs as they come forth\u2014two, now three, now five, now eight, now fifteen, now twenty boys coming through as applause erupts\u2026boys just coming and coming and\u2014o-o\u2014oh\u2014OHHHHHHHHH!\n\nIt\u2019s over in ten minutes. And then Slimane comes out\u2014reluctantly, it seems\u2014for a bow, head down, hands shoved in his pockets. No victory-lap promenade with the models for him before he is hurried off to a soft-lit black box of a room, where he\u2019ll be smothered in praise. \u201CBravo, Hedi! C\u2019\u00E9tait magnique!\u201C Shifting stiffly from side to side, he heaves a sigh between well-wishers, stealing himself for this awkward ritual. From the Americans\u2014\u201CSuch a genius show!\u201C Then the harsh light of a handheld TV camera floods Slimane\u2019s face as his great friend Karl Lagerfeld comes in for a hug. In his signature dark glasses, starchy pastor\u2019s collar and lacquered tweed Dior blazer\u2014his silver mane pulled back in a black scrunchy\u2014the regal Lagerfeld gives the cameras what they crave: images of the Old Guard embracing the new (he once said his recent dramatic weight loss was inspired by a desire to fit into Slimane\u2019s clothes). Encircled by microphones, Lagerfeld and Slimane talk for several minutes\u2014a photo op, basically, given that they\u2019ll be dining together after the show.\n\nKris Van Assche smiles; his shirt is damp with sweat. Sabisha Friedberg enjoys a cigarette. Out by the catwalk, the lights are on in all their fantasy-crushing fluorescent gloom. Whistling workmen are taking apart the bleachers and rolling away sound equipment in large boxes on wheels.\n\nThe next day, over an espresso on Boulevard Saint-Germain, Slimane indulges my desire for a little postshow analysis. Basically, it amounts to a shrug. He has no complaints; \u201CI liked the energy of the kids\u2014they were so cool,\u201C he says, still and watchful as a gecko in the sunshine that streams through the window and catches on the little silver and gold crosses dangling on chains around his neck. \u201CAnd I liked the lighting.\u201C The point is, it\u2019s over, and Slimane never looks back. That show was so yesterday\u2014literally.\n\nEven the clothes will be relegated to memory. \u201CKeeping clothes is for people who like to collect things,\u201C Slimane says. \u201CI don\u2019t collect anything. I don\u2019t get sentimental, generally speaking.\u201C\n\nAnd so it goes in Hedi-land. Not the cuddliest place on the planet, but there will never be anywhere more fabulous."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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