Sugar and spice and everything nice: that's what the Michael Kors Pre-Fall 2013 woman is made of. Kors examined that classic duality by combining ladylike lace pencil skirts and floral dresses with tougher elements, like a black leather jacket featuring aggressive metal hardware.

Kors found his muse in the actress Scarlett Johansson. "Scarlett takes me to Elizabeth Taylor, which takes me to Ava Gardner, and to Madonna. It's the idea of sugar and spice," he said. That Johansson will star in two productions set in the '50s and '60s this year — Broadway's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and the new Alfred Hitchcock biopic Hitchcock — may have informed his midcentury silhouettes. Mink lapels rested on a round-shouldered black wool coat and a boxy green tweed jacket, and cigarette pants cropped above the ankle abounded where A-line skirts and pencil skirts did not.

The finishing touches in the collection helped drive the point home: leather renditions of the opera glove in black and white and cat-eye sunglasses added punctuation to an already well-articulated collection.

Photos courtesy of Michael Kors

Proving that designer collaborations come in all shapes and sizes, Cushnie et Ochs has partnered with Playboy. Today, the duo will unveil a black leather bustier they created for the magazine at a party in Miami. The top will retail for $695 on Playboy's online store.

"Playboy is such a quintessential brand," said Carlie Cushnie. "They told us where they're heading and the sort of people they had been working with, like Jenne Lombardo and Neville Wakefield, and we thought we could do something really cool and edgy and special."

The company recently enlisted Lombardo, who works with MADE Fashion Week, and Wakefield, an art curator, as consultants. A look at one of the first projects to follow their involvement with the brand here in the gallery.

Photos courtesy of Cushnie et Ochs.

Linlithgow Palace — the semiroofless, crumbling Scottish castle where Mary, Queen of Scots, was born — was the venue Karl Lagerfeld transformed for his annual Chanel Métiers d'Art collection Tuesday night.

"I like the idea of Mary Stuart, as a former Queen of France who became a kind of fashion icon of another period than Chanel, who was a kind of Queen of French fashion, too," Lagerfeld said of why he chose the location. "I like the encounter — it never happened, it never could happen — but I like the idea of those two women involved with Scotland in very different ways."

Lagerfeld uses his Pre-Fall collections as an opportunity to highlight Chanel's craftsmanship, and this offering, filled with '90s shapes and layering that pointed to grunge, was heavy on colorful knitwear produced by the Scottish mill Barrie. Argyle was featured prominently and appeared on pullover sweaters and stockings, and one oversize cardigan modeled by Scottish-born Stella Tennant combined Fair Isle patterns with colorful tweeds. Four-year-old Hudson Kroenig, who walked down the runway with his model father, Brad, wore a tartan kilt.

To underscore the inspiration, Lagerfeld staged bagpipe players outside of the show. Inside the drafty space, attendees kept warm with knit blankets and fires set inside the square runway.

We're willing to bet all those layers of wool kept the models pretty warm, too. A look at the show, here in the gallery.