Cruising down Rodeo Drive, Beverly Hill's absurdly luxurious high street, one begins to understand what Andy Warhol meant when he likened it to "a giant butterscotch sundae". Seen through fronds of tropical plants and ripe fig trees, the pink marble and gilt-fronted stretch feels like an exotic safari park -- only here the big game wear beige suits and scuttle around toting Apple Powerbooks.

The day I visit, there is an odd blot on the landscape: a cluster of pale-faced men in dark suits. They are not wearing sunglasses, they are wearing white socks and they are standing outside the newly opened Hugo Boss superstore. No prizes for guessing these are Boss executives flown in from Metzingen, Germany, for the store's lavish Hollywood launch.

Boss suits first entered the public consciousness when they appeared in the hit late Eighties series LA Law and since then they have been viewed as the BMW of menswear brands: big, moneyed, expensive and square.

But in the past couple of years, the cult of menswear has been transformed, in part by the boom in men's magazines and the rise of the male model. Now designers are falling over themselves to boost the profile of their menswear lines -- leaving specialists like Boss to try to defend their turf.

``The trouble with us is we don't have a diva,'' confides one Boss executive. A diva? ``Yeah, like Giorgio Armani, Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren: the label is the man, the man is the label.

The public sees pictures of them, people can see their lifestyle. Like Donna Karan, now she's a real diva.'' Back in 1923, there was a Hugo Boss, but he has long since passed away.

Now the closest the company gets to a diva is chief designer Werner Baldessarini, a charismatic man who bears an uncanny resemblance to a James Bond villain. In the days before the launch, I overhear several misguided waiters and drivers refer to him as Mr Boss and Mr Hugo, so maybe Boss does have its diva after all.

It is no coincidence that Boss has chosen to open on Rodeo Drive. Menswear is booming in Hollywood: Tommy Hilfiger and Guess? Jeans are both opening superstores here; Calvin Klein, Polo Ralph Lauren and Armani have all expanded their menswear space.

Current movieland favourites Gucci and Prada have both had revamps, and the links between the two worlds are growing. On the one hand, stars such as Willem Dafoe, Bruce Willis and Tim Roth have modelled for ad campaigns for designers who would once have hired models.

On the other, film companies are increasingly relying on designers to provide free costumes. It started with Armani and American Gigolo; more recently, Prada designed Leonardo Di Caprio's suit in Romeo and Juliet, with the payback that he would wear Prada for all the film's publicity.

``We want stars to wear our suits, then everyone else will want to,'' says Andrea Kurz, head of Boss US. It already has an impressive celebrity client list, including John Travolta, Quentin Tarantino, Tim Robbins and George Clooney. Even Geena Davis is a disciple. Perhaps its biggest coup was volunteering to dress Nicolas Cage for the 1996 Oscars.

``He had just been placed on People Magazine's Worst Dressed List and no one wanted to give him clothes. We saw it as a challenge, he won the Academy Award for Leaving Las Vegas and he has been very loyal to us ever since,'' Kurz says. ``Also, we wardrobe Robert Redford'' in LA, wardrobe is a distressingly popular verb.

Behind the scenes, the folk at Boss believe they have a secret weapon in the battle of the suits: they know how to make men shop. But I thought we were all agreed by now that men the world over are allergic to shopping? ``Yes, but by showing him how to dress, we can change his behaviour,'' says Dr Bruno Salzer, a Boss director. ``Sixty per cent of men don't choose their own clothes -- they are chosen by wives, girlfriends, mother. That's why we put together ties, shirts and suits around the store it helps a man to know how to put a look together.''

Surely some men have more sense than that? ``Men are less confident than women in knowing how to dress,'' he says solemnly. ``Of course, we are not just selling a suit, we are selling a feeling. Boss is a very masculine brand.'' Other baffling examples of their research indicate that men respond positively to flowers (these figure in each of the 181 Boss shops around the globe) and having the merchandise placed on tables where they can stroke it.

The Boss shop on Rodeo Drive is a 400 sq ft temple devoted to suits, ties and smoked glass. The walls are decorated with a ``celebrity art exhibition'' featuring the work of Yoko Ono, Dennis Hopper and Donna Summer. Everything is vast and shiny and luxurious, ready for the stampede of celebrity clients.

Ironically, though, all this retail splendour is going to be wasted on them, since most stars on Rodeo Drive enter stores from grim rear service entrances where they have to slip past rubbish skips. They are then whisked up in private lifts to the VIP suite -- at Boss, this resembles a small hotel suite, featuring phone, fax, velveteen sofa, rap music and an impressive tray of drinks and monogrammed Boss mugs.

To win over the good burghers of Hollywood, Boss is staging a lavish champagne reception at the new store. In attendance are a smattering of TV stars, elder generation film actors like Lloyd Bridges, supermodel Mark van der Loo, who features in the Boss ads, and Beverly Hills 90210 star Jason Priestley, who causes a rumpus by, shock horror, smoking.

Oddest arrival of all is former US foreign secretary Warren Christopher, looking slightly bewildered.

``What on earth is he doing here?'' I hiss at one of the many Boss executives. ``Oh, he lives in LA,'' she says airily, as if that explains everything. It is a strange party everyone is waiting on tenterhooks for Geena Davis to turn up and for the featured entertainment, former Gloria Estefan back-up man and Boss customer Jon Secada, to stop singing and spare our ears.

Geena never shows, which is a pity as she would have picked up some good news. Determined to press on with its plan for global suit domination, Hugo Boss is to launch suits for women next spring. At least we won't have to be taught how to wear them.

The Observer News Service

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.