Some things are overdone, like the ballooning sleeves of blouses, each one the size of yesterday's poufed skirt.

Animal prints, such as a stenciled leopard skirt, are a topical touch, and the poufed skirts that de la Renta pioneered continue to enliven short evening dresses.

Inspirations went from Klimt, for black sheer dresses with precise geometric beading, to Toulouse-Lautrec, for cheerful-strumpet poufed minis worn with boots in black stretch damask held by garters.

"Princess is like a walking billboard for us," said Ms. Diehl, who was dressed in one of her own space-age punk creations, a cropped black bolero jacket with hot pink curls of wire-covered fabric that doubled as poufed Victorian sleeves.