Reintroducing color meant a pale green shirt, perhaps with inserts of open-work.
An all-in-one black pants outfit, with inserts of white, looked more convincingly modern.
There was a whiff of San Francisco in the 1970s about a leather body suit, with inserts of folk motifs.
Or there might be kilt-length pleated skirts, with inserts of shearling making more of the highlands theme than the touch of plaid.
Hence, the sweet naughtiness of clothes that hinted at school uniforms in prim colors — but they had windows on the body with inserts of mesh, lace or crochet.
"Haute Boho" was the message at Emilio Pucci, where bare-midriff tops and gypsy skirts with inserts of lingerie lace in the patterns of the maestro's Florentine prints made for a collection pulsing with Mediterranean heat.
As the instigator of the shorts suit, now on every other men's wear runway, the designer Thom Browne eased the formality, sometimes offering dress shorts with inserts of satin or a curving hem.
The silhouette was mostly long and slender, but with inserts of a heavier texture at one breast, a slit opening up the spine, split skirts or a sudden gleam of silver like moonlight on water.
The designer also creates a vivid story line — this season an aristocratic female bandit on the run, who patched men's coats with inserts of fur and put tailored capes over light lace dresses.
The jewels, set alongside bird cages, empty but for a fluffy white feather, were mainly in white diamonds with inserts of stones in soft shades like pale rose-colored, pear-shaped sapphires.
