By: Alexie Dupre on Wed Mar 26, 2008

Spring is coming, sometime, I’ve heard. The longer duration of this winter has meant that we all have a bit more time than usual to get our wardrobe in order, pick out some new pieces, and bloom along with the tulips. Being fashion-forward often carries with it a bold price-tag, as well, but analyzing major trends means that the savvy and frugal fashionista can get a jump on the game.

Speaking of flowers, the Spring looks all had a heavy element of flower prints, in graphic swashes – floral flash and bold lines, more Ascher scarves and art-nouveau illustration than Mother’s staid Sunday roses – from Balenciaga to Diane von Furstenberg, most major designers hit on this key, which is a sure sign that they’ll be popping up on the racks of shops that cater to more budget conscious shoppers in a while.

The look for the Spring 2008 women’s collections were dreamy, ethereal, Victorian garden fantasy, and a bit flashy, in equal measure. A wispy fantasy world of femininity that stood in fascinating, opiate-like contrast to the tightly tailored formality and masculinity of the Spring 2008 men’s collections.


More Gauze, Nurse!
The more adventurous and well-sculpted amongst us will be drawn to the catwalk’s gauzy layers, with their revealing flash of flesh. Marc Jacobs’ transparent side and back-panels on his dresses are nice to keep in mind, but Louis Vutton’s sheer nurse uniforms, boxy and unappealing, probably won’t be popping up at any spring BBQs this year, except in the case of cardiac arrest, so there’s no need to get that adventurous.

J. Mendel’s floating, multi-layered white dress dared to mix textures, but remarkably, seem reserved enough. It’s beautiful, and it should embolden you to mix and match white fabrics. Start with a simple base, such as white pants, and add from there, adding flourish and flare as you see fit with other pieces, like blouses.

Suit Up
From Yves St. Laurent’s notorious le Smoking jacket in the 70s, the androgynous element has weighed heavily, therefore women wearing men’s tailored suits would seem to be such a staple as to not deserve comment. However, this year, the look is getting major play in spring, unseasonably so.

Lagerfeld tips his fan to bondage themes with a harness over a white blouse and high-waisted slacks, the shirt finding spiritual kin in Gucci’s handsome cut button-down shirt with white collar. There’s a lot of taking inspiration from the gutter-snipe gothic and punk, and running it through a of (Helmut) Newtonian glamour, the dry rot of Dorian Gray seeping in.

Glam comes heavily represented by Jens Laugesen’s gold lame dinner jacket, elegantly elongated for those of us blessed with above-average height and a love of Mr. Elvis Presley. The black lapel differentiates it, though.

Sounds of the 60's
Stella McCartney’s artsy take on art nouveau motifs reminds us that the aesthetic of the 60s youth movement often borrowed heavily and liberally from that initial period of American youth liberation/libation, the 1920s, while Prada’s and Cavalli’s ghostly violet and blue tones hit at darker, more heady tones that

While Hermes hits Marrakesh market hash dealer with dusty brown shirts with ornamental script, a white caftan by UK’s Top Shop appears to be that hash dealer’s Ivy League drop-out customer.

Red & Yellow
401K Disco meets high-end ladies who lunch glamour with vibrant notes being hit by a whole series of designers, many of the usual suspects, but some new ones, too. Marchesa, Derek Lam and Dior all clocked in brilliant, blood red dresses, cut long and seductively, while the subdued rhubarb red of Naeem Khan’s signature dress promises satiation not so saccharine.

Spring collections even leaned spring-tulip, and not winter-jaundiced, with gorgeous yellows. Sonia Rykiel’s bright yellow trench and Dsquared’s tongue-in-cheek take on the collarless Chanel jacket were unmistakably wild, but the coup-de-grace of the jaune de printemps was Galliano’s neo-Grecian whimsical and airy high-wasted dress in pastel yellow.