

Reporting from Milan -- I've noticed a pattern over the last eight seasons covering the men's runway collections: The quality of the opening laser light show is inversely proportional to that of the collection that immediately follows it.

And, on Monday, Versace put on one hell of a light show.

Explicitly drawing inspiration from "Tron" (yes, the 1982 Walt Disney film "Tron," why do you ask?), and William Gibson's 1984 novel "Neuromancer," (which popularized a now-familiar word of Gibson's coinage -- "cyberspace"), it seemed to be just as heavily influenced by "Terminator" and the dispersive prism album cover art of Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon."

Clearly there had been no small amount of technical fiddling to get the fashions of the future off the ground; one jacket looked like it had been shaped out of crumpled aluminum foil, which might have made it a wacky, cool concept piece if that's what the designers used. Instead it required (as the show notes explained) "fur dipped in a proprietary dye to resemble silver foil."

And, also according to the notes, luminescent fiberglass played a supporting role -- something about adding brilliance to the chalk stripes.

There were folded, darted leather jackets, leather bags and jackets that looked as if they had been studded with ball bearings, and wool felt trousers and jacket lapels coated to a mirror-like finish with polyurethane (which basically made it look like ... you guessed it, patent leather).

Perhaps this was Versace's "Tron" collection -- only in reverse. In 28 years we could look back and laud this as the collection that employed all kinds of cutting-edge innovation to change the game forever.

But on Monday, it looked a lot more like Bruce Boxleitner zipping around on a light cycle wearing head-to-toe CGI neon.

-- Adam Tschorn

Photos: Versace menswear fall-winter 2010 runway

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Photos: Looks from the Versace men's Fall/Winter 2010 runway show, held on Monday in Milan, Italy. Credit: Peter Stigter / For Los Angeles Times