Incurable romantic that he is, Giambattista Valli showed a sophisticated Resort full of flowers and bows that evoked Paris in the springtime. The extensive collection, which accounts for a healthy share of Valli’s business, was strong on eveningwear, with short flower-printed dresses for cocktails and strapless gowns for galas. Both came with gently poufed proportions to suit latter-day Marie Antoinettes—or the very au courant Madame Sarkozy.

This October, Ralph Rucci will receive a National Design Award from Cooper-Hewitt. But you scarcely need that nugget of information to know that Rucci likes his fashion sculptural and dripping with concept and reference. All of that was present in his Resort collection, but he also introduced a new element here. Call it Rucci Lite: chic dresses and gowns in matte jersey and a lovely little white pintucked chiffon cocktail frock that should make the younger set (who wouldn’t usually give this label a chance) think twice.

After seven years as a designer, Anne Valérie Hash feels she’s “turned a corner with couture.” With a few real clients to dress (young Saudi Arabian customers), she’s aiming to make her collection “more strict and wearable, with a balance between structure and femininity.” This season, she took a botanical tack, basing her shapes on the scroll-like forms of orchids. Like all research, it worked best when not taken too earnestly. A fitted, white, stiff silk sheath dress with sculptural rolled-back lapels came out as the best among her structured looks; others were marred by a curious frontal pouch that took the ecological reference a step too far. Luckily, though, Hash is also quietly cultivating another talent more likely to attract young women on the lookout for pretty party clothes. Her fairylike, micro-paneled lace dresses and skirts in cloudy gray, ivory, or pale pink have an uncontrived appeal that, though not new, is bound to be the easiest sell in this collection.

After entering the Paris couture season as an Italian outsider a few years ago, Giorgio Armani has relaxed into his stride. Dispensing with hats and other distracting accoutrements, his show opened with a concise essay on what he has always been known for: elegant and easy pantsuits. It wasn’t an exact repeat of the unstructured tailoring with which he captured the loyalty of working women in the eighties, but rather a finely tuned update that combined feminine, trumpet-sleeved jackets with a great new cut of ankle-grazing, high-waisted pleated trousers. Better still, by breaking up the suits into contrasting pieces of powder-pink tops and menswear fabric bottoms (and vice versa), he neatly consigned the dour look of corporate uniform to the past.

At a time when designers have been producing tricky, experimental trouser shapes (and Armani, to be fair, has been among them in recent seasons), these will be manna to pants-loving women who’ve spent so long in the wilderness. So, too, will some of his jackets, especially the precisely tailored, neatly square-shouldered tuxes—and, for anyone with an eye for an attention-grabbing evening look, the glam silver python number. Of course, tailoring is only half of what Armani has to offer in couture. For full-on event dressing, he has countless solutions in beading and chiffon. Best, though, was the simplest: a strapless column, half black, half white, tied with a velvet bow under the bust. It was old-school glamour nailed with a modern minimalist’s eye: the thing—like the pantsuit—Mr. Armani excels at.

“This collection is all easy pieces to wear and put together,” explained Victoria Bartlett of her sophomore Resort lineup for VPL. The designer stayed comfortably within her perennial edgy-sporty range, showing smart separates like a metallic linen dress that could be topped with a cozy oversize cashmere sweater. Signature bra-detailed tops, shown with pieced skirts, kept to the label’s spirit of blurring the lines between innerwear and out, as did lingerielike bikinis.

In a way, it was a classic: combining the indelible fifties inspiration of Lisa Fonssagrives, Dior mannequin and wife of Irving Penn, and that of the new model of French conservative chic, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy. Those two streams of thought merged into a collection John Galliano called “fresh couture—restrained and refined.” If it didn’t exactly result in 100 percent conventionality (there were plenty of sheer skirts and fetishistic patent belts that might not work at a political summit), the happy fact that the first lady of France has chosen to dress at Dior gave Galliano full rein to revel in the realms of glamour the house established 60 years ago.

The templates were all there: big coats, wasp waists, nipped jackets, circle skirts, tulle dance dresses, architectural gowns cut from spiraling lace and jutting scrolls of crin. Mostly framed in black and white, with tints of gray, caramel, Parma violet, mint, and chartreuse to follow, the shapes traced familiar silhouettes—albeit a familiarity shot through with Galliano’s irrepressible touches of perversity. A nod to Dior’s New Look peplum became a stiff patent hip-jutting belt with cross-lacing in the back, and a knowing acknowledgment of the basis of the hourglass silhouette came in a couple of see-through gowns with the corsetry fully on display. Still, this was Christian Dior very much under control and within the scope of reality. Add some lingerie and take off the belts, and it’s no stretch at all to imagine Madame Sarkozy finding plenty here to wow the world in her demure manner, come fall.

Alexis Mabille is the new boy in Paris, stepping onto the runway during the couture season for the second time with a buzz and a glamorous audience (including the grand Italian couturier Simonetta, high-ranking friends from LVMH, and lots of pretty girls) around him. The ideas he showed were based, he said, on on the students, staff, and parents at an “imaginary mixed school.” They had freshness and charm—and plenty of the hallmarks of the business in witty bow ties he’s been running since 2005. The motif, naturally enough, turned up in satin on the heels of shoes, running along the spine of a black gown, as decorations perking up in the back of the girls’ heads like little ears, and as peacock-feather brooches. Still, what Mabille had to offer in the way of clothes—slim black dresses with piqué shirt bibs; drop-waist, navy silk schoolgirl shifts; and an easy-chic, elongated pantsuit—demonstrated that he’s well on the way to growing beyond the accessory niche of his beginnings.

Having recently seen Control, the biopic of Joy Division’s Ian Curtis, Rag & Bone’s Marcus Wainwright and David Neville were feeling slightly New Wave for Resort. However, any Debbie Harry references were subtly (and quite wearably) worked in—take, for example, a bright bateau-neck silk blouse and skinny black jeans, or terrific buttery leather jackets with just the faintest whiff of Members Only. The designing Brits continued their lean tailoring in skinny vests and blazers—some cut in a deceptively sharp-looking yet comfortable jersey. The duo also had news to share on the collaboration front: They’re working with British glove-maker Dents and Savile Row tailors Norton & Sons and taking a first stab at women’s shoes in a flat low boot. More exciting still, all of the above will be available at their first retail store, to open by early fall. Stay tuned.

Riccardo Tisci at Givenchy has moved up to the point where he’s hitting the tricky balance that couture demands: developing recognizable signatures, on the one hand, and spinning fantasy, on the other. He had a theme for Fall—anticipating the trip to Peru he plans to take in August. That gave him a color scheme, from the tobacco browns of gauchos to the vivid pinks, folkloric alpaca blanket stripes, and patterned knits of Inca culture. To his credit, though, he used those devices to develop more of what his growing audience has learned to love about him: his young, modern, and urban take on chic dressing, punctuated with incisive tailoring and a flair for intense shots of decoration.

The latter came across best in two irregularly tiered, densely fringed dresses in pale pink—updates for all the clients who fell for the feathered dresses in his last couture collection. For day, his tailoring alternated between wide-cut, dark khaki pants with luxe bombers and leather jackets and pin-slim long jackets and fitted vests worn over leggings. Added to that, his floor-grazing, asymmetric jersey dresses with trailing trains and the series of sheer, black Chantilly lace gowns under biker jackets and capes gave the sense of a collection that has a central core. Tisci’s Givenchy now has a character and confidence of its own.

Who were the women Christian Lacroix sent out for Fall? Some sort of squadron of Ruritanian drum majorettes, marching along with their corseted, bejeweled jackets; leg-of-mutton sleeves; frothing tulle skirts; lace-veiled eyes; and jet-encrusted mohawks? Only a dull mind could ask for any literal explanation. An invitation to Lacroix’s couture show is a ticket to witness a unique excursion into mind-bending color, multiple historical mergers, and elaborate detail piled upon elaborate detail.

Where it starts out—this season, in sexy little bustled skirts—isn’t where it can be expected to end. In between, there are the girls in splashily painted pink sixties car coats and matador jackets, the severe Edwardian ladies, the infantas, and finally, a grand procession of guests wending their way to some fantasy ball. Everything about it is unlikely, excessive, and delightful. Who else could match lace skirts with lace tights and get away with it? Or bother to patchwork three different shades of pink and red beneath the black passementerie on one tiny toreador bolero? Or paint the layered flounces of gown to look like the petals of a giant poppy? At a time when so many voices are calling for a return to sobriety and realism, this is certainly not it. It’s escapism on such a heroic scale that it can only leave an audience wishing that life could ever live up to Lacroix.