Resort

The resort collections used to be one of fashion's most endearing anachronisms. In the good old days one only needed resort wear to wear in, well, a resort. Those jetting off to the Bahamas in January couldn't rely on the high street to provide anything beyond woollen socks and winceyette nighties, so designers created balmy, beachy kaftans and eveningwear out of necessity. Resort buyers were sun-worshippers and they expected a gold lamé swimsuit and matching turban whether it was snowing in the western hemisphere or not.

In recent times, however, the resort collections have become an integral trans-seasonal keystone for designers to assert the core values and identities of their lines. They're also pretty much crucial in an age when the perennial desire and need for new pieces refuses to be hemmed in by the tags and timelines of “spring” and “autumn.”

For Balenciaga's resort 2011 collection, Nicolas Ghesquière re-imagined several of the label's signature looks under the umbrella term “techno bohème.” Retro-futuristic camel-Crimplene suits and tailoring, so reminiscent of pieces by the house's founder, are mixed with iridescent, fluoro pieces that speak of the wild design talents of its incumbent. Chain mail tops whisper of medieval warriors as much as they do spacemen, highlighting Balenciaga's idiosyncratic, rarefied and historicist take on future-glam, with wide-leg, bagged out trousers recalling both Cristóbal's sculpturalism and Nicolas's dimension-play.

Marc Jacobs at Louis Vuitton, meanwhile, fuses the 50s belles that he showed for autumn with the techno travellers of spring 2010, resulting in a more casual, less austere vision of femininity than last season's. Prom dresses decorated with appliqué flowers are topped off with sporty-looking, Aertex-style yokes and collars, while pussybow collars mingle with khaki tailoring.

Resort collections, because they are designed to sell, are less conceptualised, and more diverse than the seasonal offerings, giving designers the freedom to riff on commercial pieces and develop them in new ways.

But they're also about perfecting pieces and distilling a label's essence. Francisco Costa at Calvin Klein explores loose-fitting chemise dresses and shifts in a palette of white, nude and grey. So far, so Calvin – but for Costa's ingenious addition of an architectural flick here, a volume-shifting tick there.

But that's the point with a resort collection; they're born of the “if it ain't broke, don't fix it” fashion mindset. But the point is rather: if it ain't broke, buy a new one anyway.

Zoë Taylor has appeared in Le Gun, Bare Bones, Ambit and Dazed & Confused. She is currently working on her third graphic novella and an exhibition