Save for a pair of unfortunate face harnesses (why?) and a few perplexing corrugated-cardboard vests, Filip Arickx and An Vandevorst took a much more real-world approach than they did last season, and the collection was all the better for it.

Traveling familiar terrain, they turned out structured and pieced jackets and vests riveted together with metal bolts—they were subtler than they sound—and paired them with fluid, full pants or draped jersey skirts and leggings, which were tucked into thigh-high boots with articulated knees. Everything was monochrome—beige, wine, plum, fuchsia—except the black numbers. Black shirtdresses came in an abstract chalkboard print (blackboards and cardboard being the designers' twin obsessions for Fall), and drapey black cowl-neck sweaters were covered in actual chalk dust. As one model did her front-of-runway pivot, a pouf of white powder came off her.

Toward the end, Arickx and Vandevorst sent out an otherwise plain button-front shirt with dozens of pieces of chalk held in place by rows of holsters. It was a funny, light moment, although it ultimately evoked bullets and guns. Were the husband-and-wife duo offering a "Make education, not war" pitch? Could be. But the important message is that they are back on track, updating the kind of basics that have potential in the stores.

BRAND: A.F.VANDEVORST  |  A.F.VANDEVORST OFFICIAL WEBSITE

"I was thinking of the ski world, and the scuba world," said Riccardo Tisci. "And the colors of the Bauhaus." True, his collection incorporated snowflake-patterned knits; neoprene diving fabric; and black, red, and beige as a color code. But the way he melded those materials into his collection spoke more of this Fall's reworking of the aesthetics of the nineties, personalized with Tisci's taste for high-drama Parisian glamour. Sporty piste- cum surfwear this definitely was not.

A better way of looking at it was as one of the season's rechannelings of the work of Helmut Lang and Martin Margiela, two towering heroes of modern fashion design whose retirement from the scene has left a gaping hole in women's wardrobes. Tisci's tailoring, like Phoebe Philo's at Celine, is a way of filling that gap with sharp camel coats, tuxedo suits, and lean black pants. In Tisci's case, it's also accompanied by tape-bound throats; red glitter gloves, bags, and lips; and sexy workings of scarlet, black, and nude lace. That's all fully in line with his own gothic taste but also reminiscent of Margiela's styling, back in the long-lost day when "edgy" was the buzzword of the nineties.

The scuba-ski dynamic meant traditional alpine patterns reengineered into formfitting bodysuits, sunk into neoprene lower garments that unfurled at the waist by means of zippers (the look happens to cross-reference with a section of Nicolas Ghesquière's collection this Fall). For evening, the fold-down device was transposed to inform the shape of black velvet and satin evening shifts and tunics. To end with, Tisci returned to working with feathers—a feature he's made his own in his couture collections over several seasons. Last in the line: a puff of white ostrich on an organza T-shirt, paired with narrow black pants, poetically trailing a pair of diaphanous "wings" as it exited. It was quite beautiful—and then again, in spirit, inescapably Helmut Lang.

BRAND: GIVENCHY  |  GIVENCHY OFFICIAL WEBSITE

Last season Ann Demeulemeester lightened up, showing draped and wrapped togas in brilliant shades of orange. Today she returned to her familiar black and white tailoring (Edwardian jackets, narrow trousers tucked into riding boots), albeit with some of the twisting volumes that made her Spring collection such a breath of fresh air.

So was this a case of playing it safe? The designer said it was more a matter of balance: the strength of black protecting the fragility of white. That idea came across strongest in a look that combined a softly draped white shirtdress and a stiff black leather brace, the upper straps of which buckled around the torso, while the ones below hung loose. Consider it a Demeulemeester take on a traditional corset. "I wanted something to give women more of a masculine shape," she explained. A tough sell? Maybe not for fans of her brand of androgyny.

A more subtle interpretation came in the form of a delicate white poet blouse worn with a black waistcoat and narrow, slouchy pants. Other pieces—like heavy-gauge cardigan capes shaggy with fringe, and jackets layered with little vests embroidered all over with bells that jangled like a suit of armor—may not win her the converts that Spring's little dresses did, but they will be plenty pleasing to Demeulemeester loyalists

BRAND: ANN DEMEULEMEESTER  |  ANN DEMEULEMEESTER OFFICIAL WEBSITE

The drive toward, as the Yves Saint Laurent program notes put it, "a natural and honest chic, an aesthetic paradigm of new minimalism" is picking up speed during the Paris shows. Stefano Pilati, whose intellectual aspirations always lead him to think long and hard about contemporaneity, is one whose natural urge is to belong to that vanguard. But what does it actually involve in his case? A stark, monochrome pencil-skirted suit and an austere tuxedo? Or a pair of conceptual lederhosen and a romantic, strawberry-scattered dress? For Spring, YSL had both. And that was odd.

The logic linking the two (if not more) sides of the collection was hard to see. Some of it appeared to stem from the Saint Laurent archive, albeit at a great remove: the strawberries, flounces, and peasant influences can be traced back to the seventies, though Pilati's bunchy off-the-shoulder dresses were abstracted from the source and eroticized with black leather short shorts and fishnet stockings. But there wasn't enough of it to get into any sort of stride, and when a single white sleeveless coat-dress appeared with what seemed to be purple djellaba embroidery on the shoulder, it was an idea that was left hanging, without further development.

On the other hand, there were more easily understood city dresses and suitings—like a regular periwinkle long-sleeved linen dress and the belted white pantsuit that opened the show—interspersed with a continuation of the edgy black leather pieces Pilati showed last winter. Then, to add to it all, there was a reversion to some of the clerical references he brought up at the beginning of his tenure: surplicelike sleeves, priestly white blouses, and almost ceremonial minimized capes.

The parts will likely separate into perfectly sellable working-woman pieces for the stores, and the more edgy elements will get bundled off to editorial shoots. But in terms of a cohesive statement, they never quite seemed to relate.

BRAND: YVES SAINT LAURENT  |  YVES SAINT LAURENT OFFICIAL WEBSITE

The return of minimalism may be setting the agenda elsewhere, but you didn't expect Andrew Gn to abandon his signature embellishments, did you? Inspired by a Louis XV commode in his Paris apartment, part of his collection of antique furniture, and a Montesquieu book, Lettres Persanes, Gn's Fall collection had an eighteenth-century look, albeit with a twenty-first-century spin. He called it "modern rococo."

The rococo element came through in the form of narrow jackets with stand-up collars and double rows of silver buttons marching up the front. It was also present in a re-embroidered cut velvet coat with passementerie trimming at the cuffs and in a bustier gown made in a re-edition of a vibrant teal and violet floral velour de sable. Then there was all the embroidered leather scrollwork at the necklines of dresses and shoulders of coats, the oversize silver belt buckles, the densely beaded belts. As for the modern touches? Those included Gn's technical fabrics and innovative techniques—a microfiber satin that resists wrinkles for a ruffled lapel, and leather smocking trimming the edge of a cropped jacket. But the most obvious twenty-first-century element was the ultrashort length of the ruched jersey cocktail dresses. All that leg, not to mention the cutouts under the bust, would surely have made a lady of the court blush.

If those looked like tough sells with the designer's own ladylike clientele, there were plenty of other frills to seduce his customers in a collection that mostly stayed within their—and Gn's—comfort zone.

BRAND: ANDREW GN  |  ANDREW GN OFFICIAL WEBSITE

"With everything that's going on, it had to be about what's essential," Kris Van Assche said backstage before his show (referring, of course, to the economy and its effects on fashion, in general, and on his own business, specifically). For the Belgian designer of Dior Homme, what's essential is the menswear element. For Spring, he decided to drape his suits and to approach dressmaking with a tailor's hand. The opening L.B.D., for example, came in a crisp cotton with short sleeves puffed stiff below pinched shoulders. A pair of suits, by contrast, were sashed at the waist with the tails of the shirts worn beneath. A soft, swagged feeling came across via jackets tucked into trousers and pants with smocked elastic sweat-suit waistbands.

As ideas go, it was a small one upon which to base a collection. And in just three shades—black, white, and gray—it didn't make for a sizzling runway show. But there may be customers out there for Van Assche's minimal approach, especially in a season when few others are focusing on tailoring.

BRAND: KRIS VAN ASSCHE  |  KRIS VAN ASSCHE OFFICIAL WEBSITE