PARIS » French luxury supernova Christian Dior looked to one of the world’s kitschiest garments — the Hawaiian shirt — for a spring-summer 2011 ready-to-wear collection steeped in easy chic.

The oversize palm leaf printed shirts got a classy upgrade, paired with featherweight chiffon in eye-popping orange, yellow and purple. The prints bubbled on the frothy layered skirts of drop-waisted minidresses or breezed lazily on the vaporous trains of see-through evening gowns.

Another Hawaiian touch — the flower lei — was worked into the collection, with fuchsia petals exploding off the hemlines of kicky sundresses and worked into the dresses’ halter straps.

Dior designer John Galliano, decked out as a French sailor for his final strut, worked in masculine elements borrowed from the mariner’s uniform, topping off the sheer looks with oversize parkas in white and navy. Silk halter tops were worn with button-front sailors’ trousers, with jaunty white sailors’ caps.

Galliano, who each season is tasked with updating the house’s iconic Bar jacket, served up an off-the-shoulder variation on the nip-waisted top, in straw-colored tweed.

It was hardly a groundbreaking collection, but its easy, flirty prettiness was appealing. You could definitely see jet-setters snapping up the flower print sundresses for their holidays on the French Riviera.

One such jet-setter, Kate Moss — who took in the show from a front-row perch — appeared to be making a mental shopping list as the ensembles went by.

Here’s the rundown on Paris shows

CHANEL

Hole-ridden tweed suits that looked like they’d been devoured by generations of moths opened Chanel’s spring-summer 2011 ready-to-wear show on Tuesday with what seemed like a sly commentary on the French heritage house’s amazing staying power.

Today’s Chanel, designer Karl Lagerfeld seemed to suggest, remains as timeless as it was decades ago under Mademoiselle Coco: Just dig in your grandmother’s trunk, pull out her classic Chanel skirtsuit and you’ll look just as hip as the packs of It Girls — like Keira Knightly, Lily Allen and Vanessa Paradis — who flock to the label’s shows.

Chanel’s shows are always a grand spectacle, but the production — which saw Paris’ steel and glass Grand Palais transformed into a chic black-and-white Versailles-style garden — was even grander than usual. The models meandered among the fountains and the black hedgerows, their black and navy skirt suits or hot pants contrasting with the crushed gravel in blinding white they crunched underfoot.

Lagerfeld also served up A-line dresses in chiffon with beaded black curlicues that echoed the rounded forms of French gardens. A series of floaty dresses in saturated watercolor print silk injected the collection with a dose of color, and the ostrich feathers that dangled from hemlines gave it an airy lightness.

LANVIN

This Paris-based fashion house has quietly built a cult following by deciphering women’s desires and churning out collection after collection that’s exactly what they want. Friday’s lineup was no exception. Designer Alber Elbaz’s parade of dresses — fluttering kaftans, sheaths in liquid silk and second-skin columns — had something for everyone.

The normally blase fashion crowd broke once and again into spontaneous cheers in the middle of his Lanvin show.

They couldn’t help themselves. The parade of dresses was simply too ravishing, too desirable.

Asked to explain the effusive reaction, Elbaz responded, "Love brings love."

People are responding to the "the fact that (they) see the emotion and the time and the work that I’ve been putting in this collection, in (trying to) understand women’s lifestyles and lives and dreams and fantasy," Elbaz said. "I almost have no private life, I don’t go out much, you don’t see me in parties. I’m just working, doing things to make you all beautiful. That’s my mission."

ALEXANDER MCQUEEN

In the months following McQueen’s suicide in February, the fashion world was abuzz with speculation about the future of the house. How could McQueen’s successor, his longtime right-hand woman Sarah Burton, possibly take forward a house so fundamentally built on its founder’s extraordinary creative vision?

Burton’s brilliant debut Tuesday at the helm of the label put to rest any rumors about the house’s future. Her spring-summer 2011 ready-to-wear collection was a tour de force that channeled McQueen’s darkly surreal style, remodeling his signature elements into strange and beautiful confections that managed to be at the same time new and reassuringly familiar.

It was all there: tailed pantsuits in mesmerizing jacquard, sculptural sheath dresses entirely made from monarch butterflies, or feathers that gleamed darkly like spilled oil or woven chaffs of wheat that appeared to be one with the models’ woven hairstyles.

The audience of fashion elite burst into whoops of approval and frantic applause for Burton, who spent years as McQueen’s deputy and deeply understood the troubled designer and his work. Burton’s brilliant debut was undoubtedly among the strongest shows of Paris fashion week.