Spring Flings You'll Regret The Season After

The Catens still believe in pumped-up sexuality, the kind that is obvious, loud and exhausting both to behold and convey. All of that shoulder thrusting and hip swiveling in four-inch heels must surely burn as many calories as a 5K sprint. The theme of the Dsquared Wednesday night show was a party set in the sort of low-lying mod house that in the 1970s would have been decorated with shag carpeting and beanbag chairs. The smell of patchouli would surely have hung in the air.

At the show, the music was cranked up so loud that the bass line pounded into one's head with the force of a sledgehammer. And on stage, as models strutted by in bright caftans over jeans, pale peach crystal-encrusted cocktail dresses and skimpy swimsuits, red aproned waiters stood ready with trays of hors d'oeuvres and champagne. Even the designers were on stage, dancing and prancing and watching their own show as it unfolded.

Everyone was pretending that they were having a splendid time at some decadent party where booze, braggadocio and free love would flow in abundance. But when is it ever amusing to watch other people pretending to have fun? How annoying to be the sober one in a room full of tipsy revelers.

Somehow Milan has managed to make sexuality and decadence look routine.

The duo of Stefano Gabbana and Domenico Dolce tried like the devil to get a rise from the audience with a collection that was inspired by luxury and the designers' recent trip to Africa. There were references to pythons, leopards, zebras and other creatures woven throughout a collection that relied on the house's signature shapes, such as pencil skirts, corsets, bras and sharply tailored jackets and coats. The collection was filled with the spirit of the Dolce & Gabbana label, but it never managed to create the kind of heart-pounding razzle-dazzle of which it is capable.

The setting was full of possibilities: a mirrored runway and rope-wrapped support poles -- the sort that might be found in a lean-to on the African veldt. And model Naomi Campbell was the first to appear on the runway -- her perfectly sculpted legs displayed in a mini-dress with myriad references to Africa's big game. There were enticing coats and shirts trimmed in python, but it all seemed familiar and it was hard to get excited about a pair of destroyed jeans decorated with crystals when this season practically everything on the runway -- including the runways themselves and the people sitting alongside them -- have been covered in glitter and sequins.

There was also the disappointment -- and aggravation -- that rippled through the audience after it had waited a little more than an hour for the promised arrival of three generations of Elvis Presley women -- wife Priscilla, daughter Lisa Marie and granddaughter Riley -- only to have their three seats filled by droopy-haired boys plucked from the standing crowd. Even the King's kinfolk are at the mercy of a traffic jam.

The D&G secondary line, which the designers showed earlier in the week, was far less ambitious but was ultimately a lot more fun. The collection was inspired by Elvis Presley and his Hawaii period. And it stood on its own -- no actual live scion of Elvis was necessary to energize it. There were photo print T-shirts that bore an image of the young Elvis, plenty of bright Hawaiian dresses and shirts and charcoal pinstripe suits as lean as a licorice whip. A gold leather blazer had a sparkling Vegas-style lapel, boots jangled with a rainbow assortment of sequins and a cropped tuxedo jacket was encrusted with bright red paillettes. It was not a sexy collection, but it was one that soared with fun and good humor.

In a conversation here one evening, long after the day's shows had ended and before a late, late nightcap made coherent discussion impossible, two topics dominated. The American presidential election is discussed with great interest and no small amount of exasperation. But if one were to be honest, the topic over which voices were raised in strongest disagreement was whether the brooch -- as a fashion trend -- was over. Please: Do not judge the fashion industry harshly. Iraq, terrorism, hurricanes, WMD and world peace already had been dutifully covered.

Could a fashion moment so celebrated for fall have gone by so fast that the average customer barely had time to run into a store, buy a glittery pin, and wear it anywhere beyond her own dressing room before it has been proclaimed finished? Such reckless abandonment of a perfectly fine style flourish leaves one worried that spring's fascination with island floral prints, poet blouses and gypsy skirts could be as short-lived. Many of the same shapes in D&G were also in Moschino Cheap & Chic, Just Cavalli and Philosophy by Alberta Ferretti. The clothes are whimsical and charming and one hopes that fashion folks aren't so quick to shrug them off as finished trends before they can even start.

Ultimately, Milan didn't offer any big, new aesthetic visions. A few designers hinted at their boredom with the overwhelming number of collections that can be described as sparkling, pretty and charming. Prada turned away from the history books and toward computer manuals and found inspiration in technology. Sander championed a little aesthetic peace and quiet.

Other designers concentrated on bringing vigor back to the hard-edge sex appeal that thrived in the late '90s. Cavalli and others went to India, Africa and a host of other countries searching for a new way to show off a woman's shape.

But fashion only made incremental changes this season. The sequins aren't quite as bright and the rhinestones aren't sprinkled as generously as they were for fall. And as for the sex, ultimately, it's just the same old thing.