Oxford + Park

High-end lingerie brand La Perla held its first couture show in Paris this season. Mixing delicate négligée with luxurious sportswear, the collection sought to deliver an "inside/out" approach that would take underwear as outerwear to a racy new level. “[The show] is symbolic of the new direction under our ownership over the past year,” said Suzy Biszantz, chief executive officer of La Perla USA. “We had our 60th anniversary collection for fall 2014. That was really the beginning of an ‘elevated La Perla.’ A lot of those pieces were handmade, very elaborate. It’s the next step, offering the couture experience." Supermodel Naomi Campbell also made an appearance to close the show, but despite her fiercesome strut, the model admitted to pre-show jitters. “I am honored," Campbell said. "I'm 44 years old. I’m not 20 years old like these girls, so I was a little bit nervous about it." Meanwhile, La Perla's creative director, former engineer Emiliano Rinaldi, said this first, "no rules" collection wouldn't be the last for the brand. La Perla will now have an annual atelier show in Paris to show off its custom wares to the public.

Love is in the air — or at least it was at Valentino's spring couture show. Creative directors Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli took inspiration from classic artists and literary greats, including William Shakespeare, Dante Alighieri, and Marc Chagall, a modernist painter whose Russian landscapes heavily inspired the first half of the collection. "In some ways, you are flying when you're in love," Chiuri said of the romantic collection that featured ethereal, hand-painted tulle dresses adorned with clouds and stars. Other pieces featured intricate embroidery (including one gown that took a grand total of 3,000 hours to create) and delicate script — lines from poems, sonnets and songs. The finale gown, one of the more simple dresses in the line-up with its linen corset and dusty blue skirt, featured red script scrawled across the bodice that summed up the theme of the whole collection in one simple line: "Amor Vincit Omnia" — love conquers all.

Christian Dior creative director Raf Simons has a "go big or go home" mentality when it comes to his elaborate sets for the label. Known for utilizing flowers as decor, last season's couture show featured walls covered in more than 150,000 white orchids. However, this season the designer went for a bit more structure. Drawing inspiration from "the druggie aspect of the ’60s and ’70s with the early salon style of the ’50s," Simons constructed a space-age set with Pepto-Bismol-pink plush carpeting and wall-to-wall mirrors.

For Miuccia Prada's fall 2012 show, the aesthetic brief was manga-inspired, "virtual princesses." With this in mind, makeup artist Pat McGrath drew inspiration from the collection's strong lines and vivid colors, creating a futuristic beauty look that included showstopping neon-orange eyebrows.

"Ms. Prada was talking about wanting the girls to look like virtual princesses so we've done makeup from almost a virtual world, like another world," McGrath said. "We've used black cream, purple eyeshadow, black eyeliner, white eyeliner, orange cream shadows. It's a very theatrical look. Very, kind of, out of this world; a fun look as well, I think. We bleached the brows and are recoloring them orange, which is quite different."

Alexander McQueen's collection titled "Sarabande" (the name of a Handel song that was played by a live chamber orchestra during the show) drew inspiration from artist and director Sam Taylor-Johnson's 2001 film Still Life, which depicts a bowl of fruit that slowly rots away. McQueen described his mood at the time as "darkly romantic," and he utilized fresh flowers because, simply, "they die."

The finale piece of the collection, worn by model Tanya Dziahileva, was a nude silk organza gown covered in both silk and fresh flowers. As she walked, flowers began dropping off the dress, which while many thought was a clever symbol of decay, was actually an accident.

"We put [the fresh flowers] on just before she went out, and they started to fall off one by one as she walked. I remember people saying Lee timed it," the label's current creative director, Sarah Burton, told Vogue. "We had a laugh about that. It was an accident!"

For Valentino's spring couture show, hairstylist Guido Palau created a modernized flower crown that echoed the romantic nature of the collection. To get the Ophelia-esque look, Palau twisted hair into a loose roll that encircled models' heads and tucked dainty flowers like daisies, African violets and baby's breath into the crown as the finishing touch. “It’s like they were just lying in the grass,” Palau said of the models. “There’s an innocence to their kind of romance.”

Raf Simons latest pre-fall collection for Dior was inspired by Christian Dior's iconic Bar suit (the name derived from the idea that the looks were intended for late-afternoon cocktail hour in the bars of grand hotels), but with a futuristic twist. With this in mind, makeup artist Peter Philips went literal with his interpretation — drawing a bar shape on models' eyelids.

"I created a look that is somewhat inspired by mangas," Philips said. "It creates a wide eye, as if there were a vibration in their gaze."

In a clever allusion to the collection, which heavily featured sequined turtlenecks, Philips used pieces of jumbo silver glitter on the upper lash line to create a "robotic" flash effect when models blinked. The rest of the face was left very natural (light foundation, soft blush and pale lipstick) to allow the graphic eye look to steal the spotlight.

i’m dying to try this scarf/belt look

Burberry Prorsum's latest campaign stars two British models as classic as the brand's khaki trenches. Following on the heels of fellow It-Brit models Kate Moss and Cara Delevingne (who are currently the faces of My Burberry perfume), supermodel Naomi Campbell and Jourdan Dunn model the spring 2015 collection for the colorful advertisements shot by photographer Mario Testino. This is Dunn's fourth campaign for the brand and marks Campbell's first appearance since 2001, where she starred alongside Moss.

"Burberry is such an iconic brand and I feel very proud to be a part of their campaign and their team," Dunn said. "This campaign is even more special for me because I was shot with Naomi Campbell for the first time — someone who I admire and respect within the fashion industry."

For the first time in its 52-year history, the Italian house of Valentino showed a couture collection stateside. The 47-piece collection was inspired by Valentino Garavani's relationship with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (whom the designer dressed for her wedding to Aristotle Onassis), and consisted of everything from wool capes to tulle dresses to crocodile skirts — all in white. The show was held to celebrate the opening of Valentino's flagship store in New York City; designers Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli will show Valentino's main couture collection in Paris late next month.

“We wanted to say something about Italian craftsmanship, Italian values, Italian culture,” Piccioli said backstage before the show. “To share this renaissance ideal of execution and idea going hand-in-hand, which is the purpose of couture ... [However], the most expensive materials will never be as precious as the time people spend working on the collection. That is the real richness.”