Their superb show combined strict tailoring -- bustiers and panels of jackets stiffened almost like cardboard -- with classic draping.
As the strict tailoring relaxed into something more louche, silhouetted figures began to overlap, an intertwining of bodies in patchwork.
With strict tailoring, wit and a stir of petticoats, Jean Paul Gaultier and Karl Lagerfeld took control of couture's pretty seams this week and slowly released a steam of sex and sin.
The airy silhouettes and ice-cream colours were a welcome palette cleanser to a week more usually defined by strict tailoring and plenty of basic black.
It is equally elegant in its way, with its strict tailoring set off by shiny top hats, gilded watch chains and elongated umbrellas.
But on the runway at least, it was business as usual, with Hilary Swank and Renée Zellweger in the front row and Mr. Klein nicely waging a battle between strict tailoring and subverted sex appeal.
The fall mood board he had tacked up in his showroom a full month later suggested that Mr. Altuzarra, a proponent of strict tailoring, was about to shift course.
So it was somewhat of a surprise that many of the young designers showing here this week offered a vision that was, to say the least, conventionally safe, either rooted in strict tailoring or the animated prints and neon sportswear of the 1980s.
"It is very tailored and strict — but we wanted to breathe air into it and bring a fragility to it," said the designer Sarah Burton, who has just returned from maternity leave with her twin daughters.
Professor Tribe saw it differently: "The court explained that even though any use of race must be subject to strict scrutiny and narrowly tailored to achieve compelling objectives, those phrases do not constitute a mantra for the denial of the reasonable desire to reflect the reality that in our society, race still matters".
