What’s pink and white and jeweled all over? Christian Dior Resort 2010 (below, center). And we likie. While some designers thought the recession memo applied to Resort (um, it doesn’t) and draped their models in drab resort wear that hardly resembles happy vaca attire, Mr. Dior, and a few others, stuck to the classic resort brights. Because if we wanted to wear black, grey and various shades of brown, we would stay in the city thankyouverymuch.

Dior took a bite from Hillary Clinton’s pant suits and decorated his models with blazers and loose fitting trousers. Blousy silks and pink taffeta made cameos in both Dior and Armani resort collections with the latter lowering the hemlines. Loose-fitting formality ran rampant in even the subtler collections, and for the more conservative resort designers, pieces that could transcend St. Tropez prevailed. Even Pucci steared clear of his signature wild on print and opted for an alternative in varying blue hues. Celine, Sonia Rykiel, Just Cavalli, Chloe and more stuck with neutral colors but jumped on the Bermuda shorts and blazers bandwagon.

If you were looking for bells and whistles for St. Barth’s New Year’s Eve, this isn’t your year. Preview Spring 2010 before you buy, and you might just kill two birds with one, er, coconut.
   

(Armani, Chloe, Celine - Resort 2010)

Emma Dinzebach

Move over, little black dress – there’s a new boss in town.  From pale slate to deep charcoal, shades of gray dominated the runways this spring with nary a rain cloud in sight.  Grey, much like its noir predecessor, is versatile and universally flattering.  A head-to-toe monochromatic ensemble – such as a silk, thin ribbed tank, wide legged trousers and gladiator wrap sandals in an ashen shade – is chic; while pewter looks punch drunk on love when mixed with an eye-popping bright – say, a sheath dress with a patent fuchsia belt and pumps.  The Vogue City will not only take you through the Pantone scale, we’ll meet you ‘round midnight.

This knit number from James Perse, for example, looks good enough to nap in:

Simple, unstructured cuts such as these also call for barely there footwear – and long legs.  If neither tickle your fancy, try this silk charmeuse dress from up-and-coming designer Laila Azhar 

 

This dress, cut at a bias with an empire waist, will treat curvy girls’ shapes kindly.  Added bonus:  silk charmeuse is a four season fabric, and works well in the summer with strappy sandals; with flat boots and a silk cardigan come fall; with tights and party shoes come winter, and any mixture of the three come unpredictable East Coast spring. 

Normally, this is where I’d pay proper homage to the Grandmaster Flash of style and my fairy godfather, Marc Jacobs, hoping to come across something demure-yet-sexy; provocative-yet-preserved.  Instead, I observed this unfortunate train wreck:

This is a dress.  This is only a dress.  After I finished hyperventilating, I stopped and scratched my head to figure out what Jacobs’ was going for.  “How to make a waif-like model look extremely pudgy”?  “Memoirs of a Geisha meets Burger King”?  Ironically, this is also the most expensive of the three, priced at nearly $450.  Sorry, Marc, but as Fergie once sang, don’t phunk with our hearts.  -Karyn Polewaczyk

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