In a testament to Carolina Herrera’s finely tuned sense of balance, her spring show contained equal measures of youthful nerve and sophisticated maturity.
Though Herrera s clothes never scream "trendy," she knows how to drop in an up-to-the-minute reference to keep things fresh. With workwear all the rage, she added subtle details like D-rings and tab pockets and showed a slim-cut safari jacket atop a fluttery paisley chiffon skirt. Charmeuse is turning up on a lot of runways; Herrera used it sparingly but to good effect in long, cool dresses of vivid green and aquatic blue. Her butter-soft pink leather suit, with its knee-length skirt and patch pockets piped in brown, was luxuriously proper without being hard-edged. Elsewhere, the designer added romantic volume to her curve-hugging jersey dresses with a classic poet s sleeve, cut on an angle. And she gave that standard voluminous ball skirt a frisky new attitude simply by sitting it on the model s hips and pairing it with a crisp, sheer organza top.
