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Until the siege on the remote In Amenas facility last Wednesday, dozens of North African desert camps were thought to be virtually impregnable, with steel-wire fences, long-range reconnaissance equipment and army patrols amid the sand dunes.

But when the attackers came, taking dozens of foreign workers hostage, they faced little opposition. Armed with mortars, grenade launchers and .50-caliber machine guns, the militants were an overwhelming force. But security experts said the armed guards found at most production and drilling facilities in North Africa and the Middle East might have at least slowed the terrorists, letting more workers escape.

"The attack clearly caught everybody by surprise," said Geoff D. Porter, a political risk and security consultant for oil companies in North Africa. "Had there been armed guards, there could have been a different outcome."

The Algerian government dismissed suggestions that it could have stopped the assault, which led to a major hostage crisis that left at least 27 foreigners dead.

An Algerian official, who requested anonymity because of the delicacy of the matter, said the attack was conducted in the dark by a heavily armed force that moved quickly over the border from Libya, making it hard for security forces to repel. Also, the official said, the government learned later how the militants were able to wage such a well-planned assault on the facility: one had worked there as a driver and presumably knew the layout.

Algerian law prohibits armed foreign security personnel, but it permits private Algerian armed guards. The operators of the gas facility — a joint venture by BP, the Norwegian company Statoil and the Algerian national oil company Sonatrach — decided to rely solely on the many Algerian gendarmes and soldiers who patrolled the In Amenas area.

Some oil companies operating in Algeria do use military guards or private Algerian security forces. "It's company-specific," said Mike Lord, chief executive of the Stirling Group, which oversaw security at the In Amenas camp. There are risks to having armed security personnel at oil or gas sites, Mr. Lord said, including explosions that might be caused by stray bullets.

Algerian security forces provided "perimeter" and "zone" security at the In Amenas base, Mr. Lord said, and the Stirling Group organized escorts of Algerian forces to accompany employees when they traveled between secured zones. But there were no armed guards within the secured zones, Mr. Lord said, under the policy set by BP and Statoil.

There was a broad fence perimeter, and it was monitored 24 hours a day. No one could come near the camp without an identification badge, and no one without official permission could travel by air or road nearby. Attacks on Algerian oil and gas sites have been rare, even during the civil war of the 1990s, officials said.

Sonatrach has a security department that employs armed guards. And according to the Norwegian newspaper Verdens Gang, Algeria gave permission in 2011, after civil war broke out across the border in Libya, for private armed guards to be used at In Amenas, one of the country's largest natural gas fields. But BP and Statoil said they did not want the legal responsibility.

"We and Statoil decided not to have armed guards on site," said Robert Wine, a BP spokesman. "Given the large military presence in the area, we took the view that armed guards were not required on the site."

A Statoil spokesman, Bard Glad Pedersen, said the company would review its security procedures. "We will go through all elements of this terrible event, including questions connected to security," he said in an e-mail.

That review should be conducted by an independent panel, said Stein Bredal, a former member of the Statoil board, who contends that the company underestimated the risks in Algeria. "To be sure that the truth really comes forward, it's much better that people can speak frankly, and they have a duty to report whatever they've been through," he said in an interview.

Bernard Duncan Lyng, who was head of corporate security and contingency units at Statoil from 1984 to 1992 and worked with the company until 2000, said that when Statoil set up a facility in Nigeria in the early 1990s, it hired armed guards.

"The first thing we did was to plan where would the best place be to have our site, safety- and security-wise, and establish a system of armed guards, and we did that," Mr. Lyng said.

But while rare, attacks on oil company personnel in Algeria have occurred. In 1994, during the civil war between Algiers and Islamist militants, two Schlumberger engineers were executed at a Sonatrach site by militants.

Most big oil and gas companies have armed guards in their facilities, said Pierre Montoro, managing director of Erys Group, a French company that provides security to multinational companies in Algeria and around the region. "People should be armed on these sites to contain the attack, for a few minutes, anyway, to allow the authorities to intervene."

Executives in the oil and gas industry said that their companies could handle the extra security concerns, but that new defense measures would be costly.

"To recreate confidence, it will take a lot of hand-holding with insurance companies, service companies and investment bankers," said Badr Jafar, president of Crescent Petroleum, a regional oil company based in the United Arab Emirates.

Others were more dire in their predictions of higher expenses, and ultimately higher prices at the pump. "This is going to drive up costs probably 20 percent," said Dragan Vuckovic, president of Mediterranean International, an oil service company that operates in Libya and Iraq.

"Really, we didn't call Karl and Raf," Pierpaolo Piccioli, who, with Maria Grazia Chiuri, designs Valentino, said with a laugh.

It would be O.K. if they had, since the Valentino clothes owed their pure lines and filigree embroidery to garden architecture — mazes, terraces, curling ironwork — from the Renaissance. Traced in piping on a cream evening cape or embossed on the stiff skirt of a wool day dress, these patterns are gutsy. They also link Valentino to Italian culture.

What Mr. Piccioli and Ms. Chiuri have gained over the last couple of years at Valentino, after a rocky start, is control over their form. This collection has, among other qualities, a strong sense of line, so that the cut and finishing of, say, a caped dress or a deep red strapless gown, stand out.

The designers are learning to use the extraordinary skills of a couture atelier to be more self-critical and demanding. In just two seasons at Dior, Mr. Simons has used its workrooms to further his ideas and expand his thinking. Mr. Lagerfeld is miles ahead of everyone. He sketches every design, and then turns those sketches over to the women in charge of Chanel's ateliers, who know how to interpret his drawings. He is able to get precisely what he wants.

That precision of thought, in a business of compromises, is the virtue of couture, and it's what Ms. Chiuri and Mr. Piccioli are closer to acquiring. It was evident in their morning-light palette of creams, light tan and pearl white, and in their lace pieces. If the Valentino designers can relate emotionally to Italian stone and iron, they may have found a vital creative key.

A garden is nothing if not the promise of continuity amid change — the change of colors and seasons, the impertinent arrival of weeds and drought. The garden goes on. By showing some of the same styles he first introduced at Dior, like a sharper Bar jacket trouser suit, Mr. Simons was essentially putting in his hardy perennials. Let's put it another way: the Chanel cardigan jacket has roots deep in the Paris soil. So does the Bar, but it needs to be cultivated. Mr. Simons is starting that process.

The remarkable thing about this collection, aside from its colors and ultralight layers, was how easily it introduced asymmetry without pushing the "It's unwearable!" button. More than a decade ago, John Galliano brought deconstruction to Dior. Everything was upside down and pulled apart. It was great, but how many people actually wore the clothes the way he showed them?

Mr. Simons's idea is clearest in a suit. Consisting of three pieces, it has a cropped sleeveless jacket, a stiffened camisole with a Bar peplum and a slim skirt with a contrasting hem. There are four colors in all, four fabrics. Each shape is incredibly simple, but it's the proportion of the shapes, along with the cuts and layering of colors, that makes the suit completely different. I hesitate to say that it redefines the suit, but it sure comes close.

"The idea is to make the shoulders beautiful," Mr. Lagerfeld said. Some of the built-out collars of suits and dresses will not flatter every figure, but filling in necklines with white sequined yokes certainly puts the face in good light. Chanel's misty forest, which also featured dresses with blood-red flowers against a black embroidered ground, provided a warm note of melancholia. It's an underrated mood in fashion, creating a richness only for those inclined to embrace it.

Observing a cream chiffon gown plumped at the bodice with pale gray feathers, I remarked to Mr. Lagerfeld about the gray.

"But it would look flat if the feathers were only white," he said.

Indeed. The same could be said about many things.

The other spring couture shows were good, but not as inspiring. Giorgio Armani put tension into his tailoring, with closefitting silk pants and smart jackets alternating with sexy tops. Baton-shaped ornaments wound into garments were inexplicable, but the jostle of chevron stripes and micro jacquards made a distinctive statement. Donatella Versace also emphasized shoulders in a collection that joyfully subverted pinstriped power suits by repeating the pattern in neon minkand metal mesh. The techniques were impressive.

Although Giambattista Valli had some sweet fabrics, his molded shapes looked trapped in couture aspic. He's capable of a modern attitude. Which is exactly what Bouchra Jarrar showed with her skimmy dresses, an ink-plumed corset and her standout coats in houndstooth and ribbed gray silk.