With exquisite bar jackets and pastel hues jolted with neon, Dior's new artistic director, Raf Simons, is getting to grips with the brand's brief. While sludgy chunks of snow covered the Tuileries Gardens in a taupe-ish blanket, the setting inside the Dior show was a spring garden. The audience - which included five pairs of bare legs, the occasional pair of spiky heels, with the rest more or less sanely dressed - looked on as the models wove in and out of the fake leafy topiary, their naked shoulders gleaming above strapless corseted sheath tops, worn with slim satin cigarette pants. IN PICTURES: Dior haute couture spring/summer 2013 collection For the past few days, normal fashion service has been suspended at the menswear shows as the front-rowers put safety and warmth first. But the spring/summer 2013 couture collections, coming four months after the ready-to-wear 2013 shows, are a reminder of what will be on the agenda once the weather warms up. First up: pastel cocktails and a neon jolt. Artistic director Raf Simons layered them with the gusto of a pastry chef piling on delicious fondants, rather than the usual, more cautious fashion approach. A baby pink moiré taffeta pencil skirt with a flash of lime green at the hem, juxtaposed against a black peplumed sheath top poking out from a Wedgwood-blue, sleeveless capelet with an acid yellow neckline provided a flavour of the complex colour palette, as well as of the clothes themselves. READ: Atelier Versace kicks off Paris Haute Couture week in sharp style If it sounds overwrought, it wasn't. For the most part an assured Simons turned volume and pastel layered into controlled architecture. Occasionally a ruched strapless ball gown seemed a little dress-makerly rather than the peak of couture. Whether this was a deliberate naive touch or a sign that the talented Simons, who arrived at Dior less than a year ago, and the highly skilled seamstresses there, aren't yet completely speaking the same language, remains to be seen. But there's plenty of evidence of what is working: those Dior bar jackets, some strapless, worn with tangerine silk cigarette pants or slung over satin cocktail dresses; the silk flowers that were appliquéd to the linings, hems and bodices of coats and dresses and stunning cape-backed and puffball dresses, hand painted with flowers, embroidered and veiled in tulle. These show-stoppers, combined with the elegant metallic stiletto court shoes, the occasional pair of neon tights and all those sequinned pouts, suggest that Simons is getting to grips with the Dior brief: spectacle, with plenty of commercial bestsellers. Backstage, while Simons sensibly said little ("I wanted to do a self-explanatory collection..."), Charlene of Monaco, Isabelle Huppert, Valerie Trierweiler, who is becoming a front row fixture, Jessica Alba, Rosamund Pike, Ruth Wilson and Madame Chirac swarmed round the designer and exchanged awkward sound-bites with the press. One, Sigourney Weaver, turned out to have a highly attuned eye. I loved how Raf took those little vests and put them back to front. What he does is graceful. The shapes are beautiful. Will I wear it? You never know, but it's always good to see great theatre.