NEW YORK, February 8, 2008 – "For me, it's about personal style," Daryl Kerrigan said at the highly informal in-studio showing of her Daryl K collection and her Kerrigan secondary line. "People are going to dress the way they dress."

It's true that Kerrigan herself has, even after her post-Pegasus comeback, always orbited around her East Village aesthetic. But, she said, although both labels undeniably have a downtown slant, she's trying to widen the divide between them. The casual Kerrigan line, shown on non-models found and cast by the designer on the street, is everything you'd expect it to be, with a plaid puffer and blue-gray washed-denim biker jacket with matching jeans. The Daryl K look, on the other hand, had a distinct polish and luxury: Beyond the obviously east-of-Avenue A intarsia knits with eighties squiggles and the Day-Glo mesh shirts, there were soft alpaca coats, a tomboyish gray wool suit, belted tunic dresses (with the lightest trim of flat studs), and an almost-formal gown with a raw hem and hanging braided straps. "It's been inch by inch coming back," Kerrigan said. Consider this another inch onward and upward.

– Meenal Mistry