Florals for spring & summer? Groundbreaking.

I've never fully understood the notion of "last season" - the idea that something becomes passé after an imaginary 3-month cutoff line is, in all honesty, beyond me. While browsing through some "vintage" lookbooks, I came across Balenciaga's Spring '08 collection which consists largely of highly structed floral numbers that are, in a word, exquisite. What's so amusing is that structured shoulders and florals have been deemed the must-have trend of spring/summer '09. Hmm...seems like an instance of what came first...