Cause for celebration; With many designers touting the anniversary of their tenure, Paris haute couture was a momentous occasion filled with crystalline visions of every house's inimitable grandeur.

Byline: Sarah Mower

Can couture last? As much as one hates to admit it . . . it can't." This is a dispatch from the fashion editor of the International Herald Tribune. Not to panic-she wrote it 35 years ago. In 1972, Hebe Dorsey was penning her premature lament as Yves Saint Laurent withdrew from showing haute couture (it turned out to be a temporary sulk; he soon returned, only to bow out 30 years later, in 2002). But here, in the beautiful spring of 2007, defying every obit routinely written for it since Nixon was in the White House, haute couture is not just still standing but whirling, con brio, into a year of anniversaries. There's the sixtieth anniversary of Christian Dior's 1947 New Look, compounded by the double-whammy of the tenth anniversary of John Galliano's Dior debut-which, amazingly, has given him almost as long a tenure in the house as Monsieur himself. That potentially daunting thought only brought out the best of Galliano in a soaring Madame Butterfly-themed collection that transformed classic Dior templates into airborne feats of origami-pleated blossoms and ravishing cascades of hand-painting and embroidery. The anniversary, Galliano said, "led me to think about the decade I had been at Dior, and the decade M. Dior was designing. It helps you see what has been achieved, but it also made me realize that there was still so much to say." He continued, "Things have changed beyond recognition in 60 years, but one thing keeps burning like an eternal flame: the pursuit of beauty and the quest for elegance and excellence. I feel as if I'm now the standard-bearer for this quest, led into battle by M. Dior. Women 60 years ago wanted to look feminine, romantic, strong yet seductive. What, really, has changed?" Meanwhile, speculation has been mounting around the lifetime celebration Valentino Garavani is planning for his forty-fifth in July. Already in the mood of gentle reminiscence, his collection was a twenty-first-century reprise of the all-white collection that made his name at the Sala Bianca in Florence. Over at Christian Lacroix, there were-as ever-poufs, Provencal prints, eighteenth-century corsetry, toreador embroideries, splashes of sixties eccentricity, and the odd extraordinary gesture of simplicity, like a drop-dead neon-yellow strapless drape. Ever modest, Lacroix wasn't making any official fuss of the fact that it's been two decades since the CFDA presented him an international design award in 1987, the same year his couture house opened. "We're celebrating," he admitted, "but later in the fall. I've curated an exhibit at the Musee de la Mode et du Textile in the Louvre opening in November. It is going to be ...