revival spirit; Spring's hypersexy looks have all of us thinking about vintage Alaia and Versace dresses.

Byline: Sarah Mower

Question of the season: Why should anyone want to dress in ultra-short, curvy dresses, gold medallions, and hot, hot color-fifteen years after Gianni Versace and Azzedine Alaia first worked them? Fran Burns, a 26-year-old London fashion assistant, is part of the answer. "For girls like me, boho was the worst possible nightmare," she declares. "I want to feel tough and sexy!" Girls like Fran, who run around London's dressed-up clubs Kash Point, the Modern Times, and Family, are the real reason that references to Versace and Alaia exploded on the spring runways. It's an accepted cycle: Fashion fiends source long-reviled style in thrift stores, get seen by designers-and in a flash, it's polished up on a runway somewhere.

In 1990, girls like Fran were ten years old or so. For them, the supermodel, va-va-voom age is a first hazy, golden memory: hardwired into fashion consciousness for life. No need to ask where they stood on the skintight dresses, Baroque-and-roll scarf prints, and heavy jewels that ran rife through Alexander McQueen, Balenciaga, Givenchy, and a crop of brand-new British designers' collections this season. The sight of them struck cold horror into those who witnessed them the first time round; but young women, students, and designers seized on the look with the sheer delight of seeing it all with new eyes and redoing it their way. "It's a revolt against the lady look," announces Jamie Surman, senior fashion editor of i-D magazine. "After such a long time of prim-and-proper, a hunger grew for something more glamorous."

But how exactly is this thing reshaping itself, since no fashion ever repeats itself in the same way? To find out, we sourced three vintage dresses, two Versaces and an Alaia, and set designers a task: How would they restyle these originals for a young woman now? We called Marc Jacobs, Donatella Versace, and Azzedine Alaia for their views. And, since London seems to be the hot spot of European body-consciousness, we took the dresses to two of the city's young designers, Ann-Sofie Back (who did short, tight dresses for spring) and Christopher Kane, who is about to graduate from Central Saint Martins with a collection based on the shapely age. Thus, an anatomy of the curvy, leggy, now-style began to emerge (although we'll have to do without the thoughts of Mr. Alaia, who chooses to remain silent).

Marc Jacobs reasoned out how the Vuitton collection evolved. "We had a big event-the reopening of the Paris flagship store-around the show, so the collection had to be sexy, hot, and exciting," he remembered. "We looked at Versace, Ferre, Krizia, an area that's been absent recently. We already had stilettos with lots of little buckles, and bags with medallions, which were definitely a tribute to Versace." The bags didn't make it into production, but for Jacobs the sentiment remains the same. "Gianni is much more appreciated now. Given time, you look back and see how important he was."

Jacobs looked over our classic Alaia jersey bodydress and concluded, "I'd never touch an Azzedine. His pieces never look dated, even 20 years on. I'd love to see a girl in it with flat shoes-not a pair of bitchin' shoes. I'd do the same thing with the Eiffel Tower Versace dress. It's got its charm, but what would make it surprising would be a girl wearing it with a casual attitude, with flats. But," he cautioned, with a large layering of 2006-style irony, "I'd hate to see it on the right girl. It would have to be on the wrong girl. But, y'know, the right wrong girl."

Ann-Sofie Back walked around the long Versace gown with its outrageous 3-D chain-mail flying shoulder detail and pronounced, "It should be short. I'd cut it up to where the side slit ends and put it with sheer black tights and chain-mail shoes." The sparkly Eiffel Tower dress, she said, sighing, has "too many colors. I'd dress it down with ...