Can voluptuous fashion stay relevant in an age of austerity? Can gorgeous decoration coexist with the need for something plain and simple? Ask Alber Elbaz, a man whose recipe for reductionism and all-out gorgeousness squared the circle with a unique flourish. "Whatever's happening now," he said, "it's the end of fake. What's not real will go. What we have to do now is make life easier for women."

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Wolfgang Joop is Paris' resident eccentric. He brought the zany once again for Spring, following up last season's space romp with a collection that was more grown-up, but barely less whimsical. He said his frame of reference was the architect Isamu Noguchi and pre- and postwar Japan. That explained the olive-drab, military-inspired cargo jackets and pants that he paired with multicolored rose-print blouses, and, somewhat more tangentially, a butterfly superi ...