VERSACE SPRING 2011 RTW

SUVI KOPONEN

Not for Donatella Versace, the feminine floor-sweepers that are floating up and down Milanese runways this week. "Rigor with sensuality"—that was her focus for Spring. And the focus was absolute: A handful of elements combined to create a statement that was limited but strong.

GINTA LAPINA

The models' hair cued a new strictness. Gone the supermodel mane, to be replaced by a tight topknot wrapped by Guido Palau and his team in PVC. Pat McGrath's makeup emphasized a strong brow at the expense of other features.

JAC

The look had a my-way-or-the-highway fierceness, but it was subtly realized. There was a kind of fetishistic tug to an outfit like the blue apron dress with the harness back; you felt it, too, in the severe silhouette, whose focus was alternately a pencil skirt that ended just below the knee or a fitted mid-thigh length.

ALLA KOSTROMICHOVA

This looked best in a trim coat-dress, which came in white piqué or black leather for maximum all-styles-served-here effect. As Donatella pointed out, the longer skirt could be paired with a midriff-baring tank or a top scissored into an asymmetric racerback—not so maîtresse after all. The cutouts were carried over to the footwear. The athleticism in such detailing gave the collection an energetic charge.

ABBEY LEE KERSHAW

The strong, clear colors played a role, as well—Mediterranean blue, orange, shades of red, combined in a strong, summery stripe. Donatella also revived the Greek key, the decorative border that is a classic Versace code.

SAMANTHA GRADOVILLE

It was traced in vinyl on a white jacket or combined with the stripes in a collage-y print on a sundress. All of this was played against a white that was as stark as the houses on a sun-bleached Greek island.

JACQUELYN JABLONSKI

Donatella extended that slightly classical notion into cocktail and evening dresses, adding fringe for movement, then weaving and draping it so it looked like something plucked from a Parthenon frieze.

KARMEN PEDARU

The goddess dress has been a house specialty from the beginning, so here it seemed like a perfectly logical conclusion for a Versace collection that drew its strength from the label's roots.

HAILEY CLAUSON

FREJA BEHA ERICHSEN

KASIA STRUSS

JOAN SMALLS

VLADA RUSLYAKOVA

KINGA RAJZAK

SARA BLOMQVIST

DARIA STROKOUS

DAPHNE GROENEVELD

LINDSEY WIXON

SIGRID AGREN

JAC

CAROLINE BRASCH NIELSEN

CARLA GEBHART

KORI RICHARDSON

SUVI KOPONEN

JACQUELYN JABLONSKI

ALLA KOSTROMICHOVA

SIRI TOLLEROD

GINTA LAPINA

MIRTE MAAS

KARMEN PEDARU

HAILEY CLAUSON

VLADA ROSLYAKOVA

FREJA BEHA ERICHSEN

JOAN SMALLS

DAPHNE GROENEVELD

KASIA STRUSS

SAMANTHA GRADDOVILLE

JAC

KINGA RAJZAK

CARLA GEBHART

SIGRID AGREN

ALLA KOSTROMICHOVA

LINDSEY WIXON

ABBEY LEE KERSHAW

SUVI KOPONEN

GINTA LAPINA

DONATELLA VERSACE

ALEXANDER McQUEEN RESORT 2011

Alla Kostromichova (WOMEN)

Sarah Burton proved she's the only choice to expand on Lee McQueen's legacy with a Resort collection that effortlessly updated his design codes without losing his drama. There's so much great material lying fallow in old McQueen collections that it would overwhelm anyone without the empathy, experience, and ability to edit that Burton brings to a difficult job. For Resort, she confidently revisited some of her own favorite moments in her mentor's saga with a lightness that could be easily construed—for want of a better notion—as a woman's touch.

For instance, a Victorian jacket was reconfigured as a white cotton shirtdress. But, more significantly for the future, proportions were lifted, with a higher waist taking some of the edge off of McQueen's traditional silhouette. It worked spectacularly well with evening dresses that fell away beautifully from the torso. One of them—in what looked like blood-drenched chiffon—evoked a vision of Isabelle Adjani in La Reine Margot, one of McQueen's favorite movies. It seems a taste for the macabre comes as naturally to Burton as it did to him. She shares his instinct for extreme glamour, too. His Hollywood clientele will scarcely be disappointed by the tuxedo dress that was bifurcated by black lace.

The tension between hardness and fragility that characterized McQueen's work was successfully sustained in defined shoulders (some armored like a samurai's) and tailored torsos that fell away into fins of diaphanousness. Burton continued to hybridize fabrics as she did in the Fall collection—lace transformed into chiffon in one cocktail dress.

Touches like that should allay the inevitable fears of McQueen's fans that continuation of his line would involve some kind of sellout. Yes, there is more of what could pass for "daywear" here, but if Burton's collection is commercial, it's because it is direct. Pieces like the white kimono-sleeved coat-dress or the black dress in a lacquered raffia and organza have a straightforward chic.

Burton hasn't neglected the dark romance, either—the brocades, the bullion embroidery are still here. She's simply let some light in.

Alla Kostromichova (WOMEN)