Gilles Mendel's Spring '13 collection was quite the flowery affair, replete with eye-popping floral prints and wispy dresses efflorescing a garden's worth of fabric blooms.

This season, the J. Mendel tone deepened by several registers, as Mendel emphasized a moody palette and taut silhouettes. He also introduced a new print that riffed off and abstracted Ori Gersht's photographs of exploding flowers. That was an explicit riposte to Spring; this time out, the print announced, J. Mendel would be eschewing girlishness and frou.

As Mendel pointed out, his leaner, meaner look this season was largely attributable to his decision to focus less on manipulating his materials (by pleating them, for instance) and more on showing them off by means of architectural construction. In practice, that translated to slim metallic jacquard dresses and tops that featured paneling or articulating seam and trim details. Mendel's dressier looks also emphasized harnessing and bustier construction, though evidence of his gossamer touch remained in a frothy, red carpet-destined gown topped with a sheaf of fluttering chiffon squares. The construction overall was impressive—it was nice to see, up close, the consideration that had gone into these simple-seeming clothes. Overall, though, Mendel's more straightforward take on his classic, high-end look only served to reaffirm that "pretty" is his native language; even hard-edged J. Mendel clothes are heavily accented.

Photos coutesy of Style.com

The mix is the message at Vera Wang for pre-fall.

Posing the question "Is it high day or low evening?" she sent out a simple shift with a shirttail hem in super-luxe floral damask and added an elasticized waistband to a floor-length column skirt in corded jacquard, then paired it with a button-down in humble cotton. A boyish tuxedo, meanwhile, was made to look more feminine with the addition of ruffled silk faille trim at the shoulders and a bullion and crystal collar necklace.
Jewelry, once such a big part of the Vera Wang oeuvre, has gone missing from her runway shows for several seasons. At the request of retailers, she reported, she's bringing it back in a big way. The necklaces and the crystal encrustations at the waistline of a sheath dress or on the pockets of a fox-collared evening jacket made this collection feel a little bit like a walk down memory lane. Revisiting your hits isn't a bad thing when it produces a look like Wang's sleeveless top in amythest satin jacquard and matching floor-length hobble skirt.

Photos courtesy of Style.com