Spring is in the air. It started last week with Giorgio Armani, who opened market for his Armani Collezioni lineup in New York.

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Mark Badgley and James Mischka are in expansion mode. After opening a Palm Beach boutique this past winter, the duo added a Newport outpost last week. For Resort, they took inspiration from the two locales. Well, where were you expecting with these designers? Williamsburg?

Badgley and Mischka had Newport in the Gilded Age in mind: One gown was literally glittering (a strapless gold number dripping in sequins), while another featured a Belle Époque-style bustled skirt. Other references to the coastal Rhode Island town were more playful: Pale ribbons shimmered like shells; jeweled belts resembled sunken treasures.

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When Christopher Bailey said he wanted the clothes in Burberry Prorsum’s pre-collection to look like they’d had a life before you met them, he was talking about much more than that slightly faded, vintage-y English rose mood that his Burberry has evoked so expertly in the past. Here, the texture of a dress in ruched and washed leather suggested something much more ancient—a sunbaked lizard’s skin, perhaps. That was in keeping with the exotic subtext Bailey was exploring. He started with uniforms from the British colonies in the 1930′s and forties that he found in the company archives, which meant plenty of the authentic military shapes and detailing—belts (the best in python), utility pockets, epaulets, wrist straps—that added spine to Burberry’s standout Fall collection.

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Giorgio Armani played with shapes and patterns for his Armani Collezioni collection — with bold geometric tops, feminine floral skirts and chic stripes on classic pin-striped suits and nautical Ts. He showed his attention to detail with textured and treated leathers, giving the lineup a cool, urban edge.

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Peter Dundas’ mission for Resort was twofold—to take the Emilio Pucci girl to the seaside and to firm up the new image that he began establishing at the house for Fall. The second goal informed the first: Even the beachiest of looks—rolled-hem shorts and an eagle-print T-shirt, say, or a floor-skimming cotton jersey tank dress—had a graphic, sexy, rock chick sensibility that meant they wouldn’t be out of place on the city streets. Dundas continued to play with the zigzag print that he borrowed from the founder’s 1957 Palio collection, but he also added one of his own to the mix: a shell pattern that managed to evoke palm fronds on a button-down blouse paired with high-waisted, pleated pants.

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“They’re all party clothes,” said James Mischka of the sparkly Resort collection he designed with partner Mark Badgley. The duo, who maintain a farm in Kentucky and just added a contemporary line, Mark & James, to a full roster that includes couture, bags, shoes, bridal, and bridesmaid, somehow found time to re-watch Evita.

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It was like something out of a quintessential Riviera movie. With the sun setting over the sea, hundreds of Chanel’s invited guests sitting in the red wooden chairs of Saint-Tropez’s famous Sénéquier, and many more onlookers piling onto balconies and pressing against barricades, Natasha Poly, Anja Rubik, and the rest of Karl Lagerfeld’s cast arrived at Quai Jean Jaurès via speedboat. And like the carefree starlets and jet-setters they were channeling, the models traipsed down the street-cum-runway often barefoot, wearing seventies-ish diaphanous caftans, long crocheted dresses, ruffle-lapelled silk jersey trouser suits, and patchwork denim skirts. Tanned and toned midriffs peeked out beneath a cropped sweater here or a button-down there, its hems tied in a saucy bow.

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Lara Stone, the famously curvy model and new face of the Calvin Klein campaigns, was all hourglass va-va-voom at the CFDA Awards on Monday night. In her strapless black Calvin dress, she looked sexy and fabulous, but those aren’t the sort of adjectives designer Francisco Costa necessarily seeks to elicit on his Collection runway. Architectural and understated are more likely his preferred terms. After exploring geometric volumes in recent collections, Costa seemed to be interested in flattening the planes of the female form here.

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Naeem Khan’s latest effort was heavy on glamorous evening looks, but a focus on floral-inspired treatments added a fresh slant to the season’s offerings. Among the standouts: a shift with silver crystals arranged in daisy patterns, and a tulle rosette-covered coral gown.

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“This collection is about my customer, and whatever makes her happy,” Reem Acrasaid of Resort. Judging by the clothes on display, the Acra woman digs bright color, lamé, jacquard fabrics, and plenty of gobstopper-sized rhinestone details. Day-Glo pink and green silk caftans with bejeweled necklines are fun for the beach, and while a belted royal blue jacquard dress should appeal to the more mature set, a cropped gold lamé bustier could draw in the younger crowd.

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Jason Wu returned to the St. Regis hotel, site of his Spring 2010 show, to present his new collection. On each guest’s chair was a box of macaroons made by Alain Ducasse’s restaurant Adour, downstairs. “Resort should be like dessert,” the Swarovski Womenswear Award nominee said. Specifically, a French one. There was a Parisian flavor to the collection, from the Coco-esque straw boaters to the tweedy skirtsuits to the sailor-stripe sweaters and full menswear pants.

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