Resort found Carolina Herrera—that epitome of decorum—in an uncommonly fizzy mood. Her Spring collection is now in stores, the one with flowers "taped" (trompe l'oeil, of course) to clothes like botanical slides. It made sense to see her extend her floral reach with a painterly, semi-abstract print on straight sheath dresses and grosgrain-trimmed capris. But from there, the prints got even more graphic. Who could have foreseen the day when this doyenne of designers would send out mushroom-printed frocks? To follow: a parade of bubbles, ranging on the size spectrum from Champagne to soap. Herrera famously prefers her own cotton shirts stark and white, but she showed new ones here with oversize bubble dot motifs (shown, in case the point gets missed, with solid-color bubble-shaped skirts). As for evening, a tonal column gown with gathered bustle seemed likelier to find an Upper East Side audience than a go-for-broke, stripes-meets-dots version in black and white. But the designer did identify a distinct advantage of the ultra-graphic route. When faced with flashbulbs, she said, her conversation pieces do what bubbles do: They pop.
