Installing on Multiple Subdomains?

Someone here posted this 6 months ago, but I saw no follow up to it. Maybe someone could explain/validate this for me please:

“Movable Type allows multiple blogs, but it would be pretty easy to do this is WordPress also. All you have to do is install each blog into a separate directory and create separate databases for each blog.”

Is this true? I’m assuming I could apply the same principle to multiple subdomains? Could anyone give me a little more detail, as I have not yet used WP and am currently researching which blog software is going to be the best fit for us.

I’m in the process of developing separate content oriented areas for our site https://www.catalogs.com on various subdomains like
fashion.catalogs.com
crafts.catalogs.com
teen.catalogs.com
etc.

I need a blog software tool for each one. Can I make WP work for this? Thanks.