Mencyclopaedia: Dior Homme

The narrow, notch-lapelled, charcoal wool overcoat cut with utter élan; the gleamingly cool, steel Chiffre Rouge watches; and the secret agent-slick bags, shoes, suits and shirts: all of these were lovely, and all highly hankerable-after - but hardly unexpected. For the squeaky parquet floors on which I walked this week were at 30 Avenue Montaigne, headquarters of Christian Dior.

READ: Paris Fashion Week: Dior spring/summer 2013

Within this massive building, four rooms are dedicated to Dior Homme, the most influential menswear brand of the past decade. The black-suited, earpiece-equipped doormen who guard it have the pantherine postures of men poised to pulverise. Anyone loopy enough to attempt the theft of a green leather parka (4,700 euros/ £3,778) or some 750-euro (£603), lambswool-lined worker's boots would rue the day. Then I saw something truly surprising: next to a dramatic, bird-embroidered cape from designer Kris Van Assche's autumn collection hung a pair of loose-thighed trousers - with pleats.

Dior Homme, you see, is the high temple of international masculine tightness. Pleated pants are the last thing you expect to see sold by a brand so instrumental in introducing the super-skinny silhouette now adopted by men around the world.

Christian Dior himself did not make men's clothes. From 1946, when he founded his fashion house, until his death in 1957, the Normandy-born designer pioneered the New Look. This big-skirted, tight-waisted, curvily jacketed women's silhouette pretty much defined Fifties feminine elegance. Men became Dior customers only later, after the introduction of its classic, citrusy cologne, Eau Sauvage, in 1966, and the introduction of its Dior Monsieur menswear line in 1970.

Then, in 2000, a 22-year-old Parisian named Hedi Slimane was appointed designer-in-chief of Dior's menswear. He scrapped the Monsieur suffix, replaced it with "Homme", and presented collection after collection of mostly black, extremely tight tailoring and luxury casual wear. There is, currently, a rather unseemly debate in fashion as to just who was the real inventor of the skinny-minimal look that Slimane's Dior Homme popularised. Now designing women's clothes for Yves Saint Laurent, Slimane takes unseemly umbrage at any (utterly reasonable) suggestion that Raf Simons or Helmut Lang created clothes that anticipated his.

READ: Paris Fashion Week: Hedi Slimane's Saint Laurent debut

What's undeniable, however, is that Slimane was chiefly responsible for the virus-spread of trousers so tight they've since been linked to declining sperm counts. Slimane's skinny strides are also responsible for a great deal of male weight loss. The American band Green Day had to embark on the Zone diet before being fitted in Dior Homme for one tour. And Chanel's (formerly well-upholstered) designer Karl Lagerfeld shed several stone especially to try Dior Homme for himself, saying: "My only ambition in life is to wear size 28 jeans." As more and more rock bands, including the Killers, Kings of Leon and the Libertines, adopted the Dior Homme look, it trickled down on to the streets.

Slimane left Dior in 2007. His successor, Kris Van Assche, has subtly tweaked that highly successful formula, but wisely not tried to reinvent it. The suits at 30 Avenue Montaigne are still narrowly cut and boast lapels sharp enough to shave with. Van Assche's seasonal collections have an interesting identity of their own, however: especially spiffing this autumn are some loden-green coats that zip up at the spine and the cream-piped military jumpers. What shocked, though, were those pleated, roomy trousers. Could revolution be in the air at Dior Homme? Fat chance. "No sir," said one of the (actually rather friendly) assistants: "You don't wear pleats anymore unless…" - he inhaled, as if struck by fleeting pain - "you are carrying extra weight and need the material".

Need to know
Also notable: Dior Homme denim (not all of it skinny) is probably the most consistently coveted by jeans freaks.
Get it at: There is a Dior Homme boutique at The Village in Westfield (Hammersmith), London. Harrods and Selfridges also stock the brand. Online, see dior.com

Below: Trainers, £490

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