"Flower Women" was how Christian Dior referred to his New Look silhouette, and Raf Simons's first collection as Creative Director at Dior was inspired by those hourglass shapes from the 1950s. But his flower women are the modern kind, and they like pants.

Gypsy opulence and the pure lines of 1960s style went into the "collision of contradiction" in Riccardo Tisci's labor-intensive couture for Givenchy, where he continues to stretch the limits of what can be done with materials. This season, it was leather. Tisci took nappa leather in skinny strips for full-length fringe gypsy shawl capes.