Dior: Holding Couture to the Light At 2:30 p.m. Monday, I arrived at Dior, on Avenue Montaigne. Whenever couture is shown in the house, in the grand salons on the third floor, an enormous throng of spectators and paparazzi gathers outside. It sounds far more glamorous than it really is. As I reached the main door, a black-suited security guard bellowed at people to clear the area so a guest's car could pull up. A Dior show, though, has a ritual element of pomp when Bernard Arnault, the chairman of LVMH, arrives with members of his family, and a black leather-clad Peter Marino, the architect for LVMH and Dior, among other companies. It's like the procession of a Mass. The show started around 3, with models drifting through the creamy gray rooms in full-skirted dresses and coats of delicately embroidered silk organdy. The palette of black, white, Dior gray with drops of red, deep purple and lavender was as restrained as the designs. Embroidery was limited to a negative tracing of roses - white on sheer black silk, say - or several lines of script. It was Bill Gaytten's idea to expose, like an X-ray or blueprint, the skill of the Dior ateliers, which he took over after John Galliano was fired. This blueprint idea wasn't original; several years ago, Mr. Galliano did a spare, semi-transparent collection that captured the influence of photographers, like Lillian Bassman, and fashion illustrators. Mr. Galliano's fantasies eventually had their whispering detractors, and perhaps Mr. Gaytten, his former right-hand, has gone too far in the opposite direction; some of the dresses, despite being transparent, had a certain first communion look. Yet, outside of a couture workroom, you would never find this degree of lightness, both in technique and sensibility. Not in ready-to-wear. And even at some couture houses, there is a tendency to keep adding stuff or making constructions that look hard and aging. Mr. Gaytten didn't do that. He really did expose the essential skills of the house. In the long run, though, Dior needs a designer with real, imaginative weight. And there is little sense of when someone will be.