Runway Feed

3.1 Phillip Lim

A lot of designers like to think they know "what girls want," but Phillip Lim really has a knack for it. He senses early which way the winds are blowing, then nimbly and ably harnesses them with his chic pragmatist's sensibility. For Fall, he's getting in on fashion's clean-up act, now underway. "Last season, everything was on the outside," the designer said last week. "This season, we're paring down to the essence." That was seen to best effect in his strong, gotta-have-it outerwear. Take your pick from a luxe black buckled cape, a collarless camel coat edged in black silk, a leopard-print shaved rabbit fur, or a hybrid shearling-and-tweed toggle coat.

That new simplicity dovetailed with part of Lim's inspiration, which set itself during a moment in the seventies when disco dissolved into punk and Halston's influence could still be felt. But the best souvenir from this bit of sartorial time travel was the trousers. The murmur of approval began with a pair of black suede flares in the second look, and slowly grew with the many creased and high-waisted pants that followed. One caveat: Most were cut in a seemingly heavy silk, sometimes with an animal print, that was pleasing to behold but didn't have immediate real-world appeal. (Though we reserve judgment until we've tried them on. We did just call Lim a chic pragmatist.) The best ones came in a blush bouclé and were paired with a languid gold sequin blouse. With an evening option like this, his severely asymmetrical silk dresses—hacked off, according to Lim's backstory, by an erstwhile Studio 54 reveler—seemed like less fun.
—Meenal Mistry

A.F. Vandevorst

Save for a pair of unfortunate face harnesses (why?) and a few perplexing corrugated-cardboard vests, Filip Arickx and An Vandevorst took a much more real-world approach than they did last season, and the collection was all the better for it.

Traveling familiar terrain, they turned out structured and pieced jackets and vests riveted together with metal bolts—they were subtler than they sound—and paired them with fluid, full pants or draped jersey skirts and leggings, which were tucked into thigh-high boots with articulated knees. Everything was monochrome—beige, wine, plum, fuchsia—except the black numbers. Black shirtdresses came in an abstract chalkboard print (blackboards and cardboard being the designers' twin obsessions for Fall), and drapey black cowl-neck sweaters were covered in actual chalk dust. As one model did her front-of-runway pivot, a pouf of white powder came off her.

Toward the end, Arickx and Vandevorst sent out an otherwise plain button-front shirt with dozens of pieces of chalk held in place by rows of holsters. It was a funny, light moment, although it ultimately evoked bullets and guns. Were the husband-and-wife duo offering a "Make education, not war" pitch? Could be. But the important message is that they are back on track, updating the kind of basics that have potential in the stores.
—Nicole Phelps

Acne

Jonny Johansson's world has been invaded by droids. As the father of six- and three-year-old sons who are obsessed with The Clone Wars cartoons and collectible figures as only small boys can be, he shrugs, "We have to watch it and play it all the time. It's sort of embarrassing, but that's where my inspiration comes from—always close to home."

Not so embarrassing, actually, since the domestic goings-on at Johansson's house in Stockholm this winter happen to have landed Acne's Fall collection plumb in the center of Planet Fashion's current sci-fi-tinged fantasies. Led by Iris Strubegger, the models who flew into London for the show had spray-painted foreheads and greasy glitter around their eyes and stomped onstage wearing cartoonish boots with Lego-like soles, dressed like some postapocalyptic alien militia.

The vibe gave Johansson a formula to upgrade cool Nordic streetwear to a fashion level—drapey fatigues, banana-shaped pants with zippered ankles, jumpsuits, oversize sweaters, and scarves wrapped as hoods. The most outstanding piece: a rough-hewn patchworked, primitive-looking long-haired jacket that was a grunge-luxe upgrade of Acne's best-selling aviator shearling. It could easily be taken for fur, but as Johansson put it, "Nope. All sheep. They brush them these days."
—Sarah Mower

ADAM

If Adam Lippes isn't the first designer who comes to mind when you're seeking an understated darted shift or a timelessly polished wrap dress, his latest effort could change those expectations.

Lippes stretched himself beyond the young, simple-and-sporty basics (jumpsuits, sweatshirts, and blazers) he's turned out in the past, skewing toward a more luxe and detailed look. The outerwear—including a fatigue jacket lined in coyote and a striped peacoat with shearling trim—was impressive; blouses and dresses were intricately embroidered with sequins. Cropped cable-knit sweaters and a few billowy maxi dresses, meanwhile, hinted at classic ADAM and gave the collection some familiarity.

"My woman is stronger this season," the young designer said backstage. "The collection is more sophisticated; the emphasis is on fashion this time." It's too soon to tell where this new maturity will lead, but kudos to him for pushing his own envelope.
—Romney Leader

A Détacher

Mona Kowalska, owner of the sleeper-hit Nolita boutique A Détacher, started out playing around with plaids and ended up with a character she called "Lady Redneck."

Harboring what she admitted was a "totally idealistic" preconception of country life, the city-dwelling designer worked Peruvian knits, a Woolrich wool, and calico Liberty prints into an idiosyncratic mix. Before showtime, Kowalska described the collection as being about "grit and sophistication." The sophistication was easy to spy: That would be the delicate slipdresses in navy and cream silk worn with big, chunky scarves, or a nearly sheer crocheted sweater worn with a darling pair of pink silk georgette boxer shorts. Left to fill the "grit" category, apparently, were the not exactly rough or redneck-ish boyfriend sweater dresses and long, basket-weave wool vests. Aside from a few overly voluminous tops (some in padded cotton) that could be put out to pasture, country living is looking pretty good to us.
—Alison Baenen

Akris

Picking up where his smart pre-collection left off, Albert Kriemler's Fall lineup was focused on languid, seventies-ish tailoring and outerwear with a sportif sensibility. The lean, spare silhouette of his suits—elongated jacket, high-waisted flared trousers—provided an opportunity to showcase the fine fabrics that Akris' St. Gallen mills specialize in: Prince of Wales checks, houndstooths, tweeds, and plaids, all in the supplest cashmere. And it doesn't get any more luxe than Kriemler's long-sleeved blouse in a taupey-gray sheared astrakhan. As subtle as that fur and those menswear cashmeres were, his leathers were vibrant: a trim, to-the-body sleeveless dress in cassis, a fitted double-breasted coat in plum. As for the sportier fare, you're never going to see a straight-up down parka here. Kriemler's came in camel hair with drawstrings on the sleeves and across the torso and back to adjust the fit.

Ornamentation only entered the picture for evening, but it remained understated: Trapezoidal black crystals adorned the sheer shoulders of a black double-face long dress; the bodice of a strapless cocktail number was stitched with smooth feathers.

If Kriemler got carried away, it was with his bags—not with the totes themselves, which are as finely made as they were when they debuted last season, but in the sheer number of them on the runway. In the end, though, they didn't detract from this well-considered, elegant collection.
—Nicole Phelps

Alberta Ferretti

Alberta Ferretti has whittled her brand proposition down to the things she does very well: fluttery chiffon, a dressy princess coat, and a quietly pretty event dress. There's no harm in that focus. Part of the battle in fashion is reaching a point of clarity where people know what you're about and why they should shop with you—and then sticking to it.

As far as dresses are concerned, the show began where it ended: with trompe l'oeil jewelry in the neckline of a nude, vertically pleated number. Ferretti navigated the current vibe for barely-there color and covered arms, sometimes with crystal sparkles planted on near-invisible net, the way you'd see in figure-skater outfits (had she been thinking Winter Olympics?). The coats, too, had the fit-and-flare silhouette that has been developing somewhere along the line this season as a mainstream, feminized response to the rigid A-line look that is taking hold in many collections.

Still, with the Academy Awards imminent, Ferretti's section of long dresses could be up for more public attention than the rest of this collection. The way she showed them, with natural-looking makeup and downplayed hair, struck a note that could look refreshing on that red carpet.
—Sarah Mower

Albino

Albino D'Amato's collection was a focused if slightly repetitive study in shape. Make that two shapes—on the one hand, there were A-line, quasi-trapezoidal silhouettes; and on the other, there were sleek, pencil-slim sheaths. Necklines were high, almost prim. But if a general austerity ruled above the waist (not a button in sight, no superfluous details save for a few chaste black ribbon bows), a lot of action was going on below it. Those A-line dresses and capes came to a halt well above the knees, and his long dresses had slits that inched up the thighs.

Albino used just a few colors-—creamy white, caramel, brown, light blue, and black—all of which worked back to the photo-realistic stained-glass prints (again, the religious undertones) that appeared on stately silk mikados. The concise palette, along with the absence of pants, gave the show its aforementioned focus, but could be a bit unrelenting. Still, there were some compelling numbers in the mix. Among the shorter styles, a black cape lined in white neoprene stood up to all the other versions of this topper out there on the runways. As for the longer numbers, cable sweaters cropped an inch or so above narrow slit skirts looked right.
—Nicole Phelps

Alexander McQueen

Alexander McQueen's last works were given final honors by his trusted team in a hushed and dignified showing that went to his core as a designer who scaled the heights of couture accomplishment. Sarah Burton, his right hand, described how, in beginning this collection, McQueen had turned away from the world of the Internet, which he had so powerfully harnessed in his last show. "He wanted to get back to the handcraft he loved, and the things that are being lost in the making of fashion," she said. "He was looking at the art of the Dark Ages, but finding light and beauty in it. He was coming in every day, draping and cutting pieces on the stand." The 16 outfits shown had been 80 percent finished at the time of his death.

What McQueen was preparing had a poetic, medieval beauty that dealt with religious iconography while recapturing memories of his own past collections. He had ordered fabric that translated digital photographs of paintings of high-church angels and Bosch demons into hand-loomed jacquards, then taken the materials and cut stately caped gowns and short draped dresses. In its ornate surface narrative, that might read as a kick against the plain and restrained direction fashion is taking, but in their own way, the fluted, attenuated lines of his long dresses suggested a calm and simplicity. Instead of aggression, they transmitted the grace of the medieval Madonnas and Byzantine empresses McQueen had been studying.

For anyone who had watched his development through the years, the references to milestone collections were apparent. The bandage-bound heads, some with feathered coxcombs, simultaneously called up the designer's rebel-British background and his landmark Asylum collection while also catching a likeness to the modest head coverings seen in Northern European medieval portraiture. When a high-collared, formfitting cutaway jacket made entirely from golden feathers appeared, it read as a direct retrieval of McQueen's first step into haute couture in his Icarus collection, after he took the helm of Givenchy in 1996 at the age of 27. This time, though, it was realized with even more skill, with a multilayered white tulle skirt sprinkled at the hem with delicate gilded embroidery.

Somehow, that one outfit encapsulated everything about McQueen: both the tailoring and the romanticism. Perhaps he wouldn't have chosen to show it in such a simple and intimate way—in a small, ornate room to privately invited groups of editors—because that left out the full realization of concept and showmanship that equally drove his creativity. But the circumstances, sad as they are, allowed his friends and colleagues to share a long and poignant moment to look at what the man achieved, and to grieve for him.
—Sarah Mower

Alexander Wang

Earlier this week, an accessories editor at a major magazine told me she was forced to ask the staff's stylists to stop using Alexander Wang's lace-up sandal boot from Spring 2009 in their shoots. Consider that: a contemporary designer snagging a seasonal honor—Most Favored Editorial Shoe—usually taken by the likes of Balenciaga or Louis Vuitton.

Defined purely by price point, his is a contemporary brand. But it's a label Wang politely chafes at, and over the past three seasons he's become sui generis: a designer with the creative chops to increasingly earn a place in high fashion's conversation, but whose clothes are accessible to more than just the one percent.

Situated at this powerful vantage point, Wang chose Wall Street's Masters of the Universe as his starting point for Fall. He took the traditional banker's suit—a push into uncharted territory for this Master of the T-shirt—and deconstructed it in a dark and sexy vein. It was "about growing up, about progress," Wang said before the show. "It's a lot more sophisticated, more polished." Polished yes, but hardly proper. Wang knows his girl, and she's not following the office dress code.

Cropped blazers, tailcoats, and vests exposed slivers of skin and were worn with thick ribbed thigh-high legwarmers, often yanked down over chunky heels. Matching backpack straps were crisscrossed in front to give a bondage vibe. Layering was part of the story, but Wang's goal was to do it in a more precise, less street-chic manner, slicing away extraneous elements. A key part of that was his new trouser, a sort of glorified belled legging that his leggy front-row fans will no doubt jump all over.

Perhaps as a counterpoint to his gray flannel inspiration, Wang also made the case for velvet in all forms, including chenille. That seems a tough sell, even for him. Then again, there's a good likelihood that the growing number of worldwide Wang-ettes—some of whom surely caught the show live-streamed on SHOWstudio or on the massive American Eagle LED billboard in Times Square—will love every little bit.
—Meenal Mistry

Alexandre Herchcovitch

Looking eastward through the Iron Curtain, São Paulo native Alexandre Herchcovitch was inspired by the late Georgian cinematic maestro Sergei Parajanov. Elements of traditional costume from various regions of the former U.S.S.R. were filtered through the designer's thoroughly urban lens: beautiful old-world silk prints became quilted motorcycle jackets; oversize metal studs (painted to resemble wood, a common embellishment in Armenia, according to Herchcovitch) trimmed delicate blouses; and ornate rhinestone embroideries added a finishing touch to tailored wool coats.

Also worth a mention was a series of crocheted pieces crafted from rubber, yarn, black crystals, and gold chains—definitely not your babushka's needlework. Add printed bandannas, wood-chain headpieces, and bell necklaces to the mix and it was sensory overload in the best way possible. With the exception of a slashed black mesh top that felt too warrior-woman for the classic-punk mash-up he was aiming for, this was a very self-assured season. Several on hand described it as his best yet.
—Romney Leader

Alice + Olivia

The serious business gets done amid the bulging racks of Fall samples at the Alice + Olivia showroom, so Stacey Bendet can use her slot in the fashion week schedule as an excuse to throw a rocking party as much as an opportunity to sell her vision to industry buyers.

This is a sizable contemporary label that caters to good-time girls—pretty young things who'd really dig a Mickey Avalon concert at hot spot du jour Provocateur (the featured entertainment at, and the setting for, tonight's presentation). With a new career-centric line debuting in the coming months and expanded knitwear offerings, the brand continues to grow, but the core look remains the same. Bendet showed a variety of itty-bitty dresses (from sexy, sequined, and body-con to a girly satin number with a sweetheart neckline and peplum waist), with chunky ribbed cardigans thrown over the models' shoulders for added attitude. "These clothes are fun," Bendet said. "They're like candy." If you go looking for deep meanings here, you'll be disappointed—but ponderous musings definitely aren't the point.
—Romney Leader

Altuzarra

In an abrupt shift from last season's dreamy seventies-inflected stenciled ponchos and shredded suede and point d'esprit apron dresses, Joseph Altuzarra sent out a fierce and fearless collection of structured tailoring, commanding outerwear, and seriously sexy dresses. Ironically, some designers have been moving in the opposite direction lately, and yet Altuzarra's counterintuitive move was completely convincing. Backstage he explained he wanted to explore the dichotomies between strength and fragility, modern reality and fairy tales. At the outset, it was hard to see where the fragility came in, so potent and imposing was the first model out in her jacket pieced together, in the au courant manner, from nubby wool, leather, and goat fur. A second glance, however, revealed that the seams at the back of the blazer's arms were stitched roughly, like sutures.

The Edward Scissorhands motif continued throughout: Sometimes the stitches were taut, revealing just a flash of skin between the curving seams of a pair of narrow pants; other times, Altuzarra took a looser approach, as when knitting together the splices in a stretchy hourglass dress. Even the boots were slashed to reveal the ankle. Belts and buckles, meanwhile, provided another suggestive element. There were shades of S&M in a pencil skirt with straps holding its hip-high slits together. The blood red evening dresses flashing décolletage and thigh weren't for the faint of heart, either.

This was just Altuzarra's third collection, but the confidence of his technique and vision would suggest that his newcomer days are over.
—Nicole Phelps

Andrew Gn

The return of minimalism may be setting the agenda elsewhere, but you didn't expect Andrew Gn to abandon his signature embellishments, did you? Inspired by a Louis XV commode in his Paris apartment, part of his collection of antique furniture, and a Montesquieu book, Lettres Persanes, Gn's Fall collection had an eighteenth-century look, albeit with a twenty-first-century spin. He called it "modern rococo."

The rococo element came through in the form of narrow jackets with stand-up collars and double rows of silver buttons marching up the front. It was also present in a re-embroidered cut velvet coat with passementerie trimming at the cuffs and in a bustier gown made in a re-edition of a vibrant teal and violet floral velour de sable. Then there was all the embroidered leather scrollwork at the necklines of dresses and shoulders of coats, the oversize silver belt buckles, the densely beaded belts. As for the modern touches? Those included Gn's technical fabrics and innovative techniques—a microfiber satin that resists wrinkles for a ruffled lapel, and leather smocking trimming the edge of a cropped jacket. But the most obvious twenty-first-century element was the ultrashort length of the ruched jersey cocktail dresses. All that leg, not to mention the cutouts under the bust, would surely have made a lady of the court blush.

If those looked like tough sells with the designer's own ladylike clientele, there were plenty of other frills to seduce his customers in a collection that mostly stayed within their—and Gn's—comfort zone.
—Nicole Phelps

Anna Sui

One of the many joys of an Anna Sui collection is the intro it gives you to worlds you know nothing about. This season's show was a passport to the American Arts and Crafts movement of the late nineteenth century, bleeding into the Art Nouveau that has been Sui's default position for years. I'd never heard of the furniture designer Charles Rohlfs, but Sui could produce a weighty coffee-table book devoted to his work. As it was, she designed an embroidery based on a Rohlfs' chest of drawers, which Agyness Deyn wore in the show. That sounds academic, which is totally selling short the straightforward pleasure in fashion that animates Sui's work. She may very well wear her influences—Biba dolly birds, Rolling Stones girlfriends—on her bell-shaped sleeves, but every season she brings a fierce-some amount of research to bear on prints, fabrics, and the decorative elements that give her clothes a distinctive richness. Here, it was the dévoré on the stained-glass border of a dress or jacket or the gold pomegranate design printed over a floral jacquard. Sui hunted down the place where Roycroft tiles were manufactured during the Arts and Crafts years and had them reproduced to be used as pendants (the Erickson Beamon jewelry in the collection was outstanding). The swirling Art Nouveau patterns on a little twill dress were duplicated in its accompanying tights—as Biba a moment as a revivalist could wish for.

But if the mood of these clothes was vintage bordering on antique, the overall impression was curiously un-retro. That's because Sui, who once worked as Steven Meisel's stylist, knows how to weigh the whimsy: a flat boot, a big cable-knit cardie, or a fur bolero helped to make her most hippie-princess looks real-world-ready. And, because the backroom boys and girls don't always get their due, it's past time to credit Pat McGrath's makeup, Garren's hair, and Frederic Sanchez's music. At some point in the future, those elements will all be part of the most wonderful museum exhibition on New York's most underrated designer.
—Tim Blanks

Ann Demeulemeester

From Lanvin's Afrocentric bejeweled finale dresses to Rick Owens' glamorous nuns, tribes have been all the talk at Paris fashion week. Ann Demeulemeester's was particularly fierce, with its red leather, glistening coq feathers, and necklaces of braided whipcord. Perhaps a bit too fierce: Those details looked better and more believable in smaller doses—a red waistcoat, say, peeking out from beneath a black jacket, or plumes decorating the wrists of leather gloves—than they did served full-on (and things did get full-on there toward the end).

Demeulemeester chalked up points for experimentation but was much more in her element when it came to the confident tailoring that opened the show. Pants came pleated and full, jackets misbuttoned to create a sense of relaxation. In a season crowded with capes, her strong-shouldered camel version was a standout. And her furs, draped at the neck and tied nonchalantly at the waist, had an offhand kind of luxe that other designers haven't been able to grasp.

If you really want to talk tribal, ask one of the initiated about the fetish that has been made of Demeulemeester's boots. This season's skinny sliced wedge looks like a wait list waiting to happen.
—Nicole Phelps

Anne Valérie Hash

Anne Valérie Hash's program notes explained that she's been focused on ease. We're all for that, with the exception of her evening looks, which we'll get to later. Jackets with pushed-up sleeves came with a ribbed knit panel down the back to give them the cool, slouched-on feel of an oversize cardigan, and men's trousers cut off below the knee were literally drooping off one hip, exposing the sheer leggings or printed pj's Hash layered underneath them.

Her signature jumpsuits were back, this time either tailored and belted or in roomy silk that she draped at the neckline to play matte against shine. The relaxed, woman-friendly mood extended to tees and long T-shirt dresses, which were pinned and tucked in places to look like a single flower. Elsewhere, they were embroidered with frogging (a holdover, like the multicolor sequins of a blouson jacket, from the designer's clever Couture show, in which she transformed or reassembled personal wardrobe items from Alber Elbaz, Tilda Swinton, and Pete Doherty, among others).

Hash revisited the shiny technical fabric she used for Spring to create blousy T-shirts and accordion-pleated minis for evening. The colors—emerald, sapphire, and amethyst—were gorgeous, but it was a bit perplexing to see so much sheer fabric (and exposed skin) on a female designer's runway. A greater achievement would've been to show how women can wear those looks in real life.
—Nicole Phelps

Antonio Berardi

Antonio Berardi is on the side of women rather than girls. He's known for cutting a shapely dress; he's great at curvaceous paneling and emphasizing a bosom; and he uses excellent fabrics. For Fall, he worked a Mad Men-ish knee-length hourglass silhouette, with a strong salute toward the Saint Laurent seventies: sheer tops, fur chubbies, and all.

Those choices meant the bulk of Berardi's collection didn't seem totally up to speed with fashion's headlong dash to reinvent itself. Invoking YSL is one of the most overworked clichés in the book, and hobbling models with un-walkable stilettos on a slippery floor reduced the erotic intentions of those passages to near fiasco. It was the ones that got away—the pieces that somehow fell outside the show's themes—that seemed more cogent to the season's developing ideas. A jacket-coat-dress hybrid tailored in gray menswear fabric and the sinuous long red-velvet dresses, one with a deep cowl back revealing sparkle embroidery on nude, were standouts.
—Sarah Mower

Aquascutum

Pure modern English with a classy accent and breaking new fashion ground with it. Michael Herz's Fall collection for Aquascutum marked a pivotal moment at which the designer found a perfect equilibrium between his own instinct for what feels right—the long, slim silhouette he started last season—and the heritage of this august yet stodgy British coat and suiting company.

After a season's absence from the runway (while the company was sold to Harold Tillman, who is also chairman of the British Fashion Council), Herz has come back with a design clarity that could rival that of many a bigger brand. On the one hand, he was among the first to commit to long, fluted skirts and narrow dresses (a movement in London that's gaining momentum by the day), and he made them work for Fall by styling them with small, leather-belted jackets; white shirts; capes; and pointy silver flats. And on the other, he's found a device that neatly ties his ideas back into the tradition of Aquascutum: a series of seventies advertisements about the virtues of the house camel coats—the fabric of which is now, of course, at peak desirability again.

On the runway—a presentation on the ground floor of the flagship store on Regent Street—Herz interspersed fragile dresses featuring diagonal shirring with modernized elements of sensible English outdoorwear, putting the quilted liner on the outside of one jacket, cutting jacket-cape hybrids, and using simplified drawstring poacher pockets.

The effect—from the beginning to the lovely gold jacquard tissue dress at the end—had a freshness, simplicity, and elegance that was thoroughly convincing. Sometimes, Herz has seemed daunted by the weight of carrying the responsibility for the brand heritage and reacted by overthinking his design and trying too hard to please all sorts of customers. Now that he's concentrating tenaciously only on what he believes in, it's all come together.
—Sarah Mower

Aquilano.Rimondi

If you caught their Gianfranco Ferré collection earlier this week, you noticed that Tommaso Aquilano and Roberto Rimondi have developed an earnest new interest in wearable daywear. This economy has a way of doing that. Fashion watchers who might've written off the duo as decorators, not designers, were probably pleasantly surprised today by a pair of gorgeous nude wool crepe sheaths, both of which were elegantly unadorned but for a floppy bow at the hip or neckline. They also had a strong navy double-breasted jacket belted at the waist over long, flared pants. Save for a couple of frilly, ruffled printed silk dresses, the silhouette was close to the body and ultra-streamlined.

No, the duo hasn't forsaken the embellished look that's become their signature, but they have modulated it a bit to stay current. Channeling Marisa Berenson and Marina Schiano, both of whom were jet-setting around Rome in the seventies, they paired snug cabled cashmere sweaters with be-feathered pencil skirts or low-slung handmade tweed trousers. They frayed the edges of their tweed skirtsuits and coats and studded the shoulders with smatterings of crystals. And they stitched strips of fox to organza to keep their furs light. The palette was soft: dusty pink, gray-blue, violet, peachy ivory. The effect was still rich, but a whole lot subtler than last season—a savvy move that could win over some previously reluctant fans.
—Nicole Phelps

Araks

The influence of Russian Constructivism could be seen in the geometric cuts—from very round arm openings and shoulder seams to oversize buttons and plackets—and in the accessorylike details. In the case of the trimmings, the results were mixed. An embroidered bib over a sheer organza bodysuit added a nice shot of sparkle, but it looked like, well, a bib. At times, the styling was to blame. Layering, like a bralet atop a collarless blazer worn over a blouse, lacked the ease that distinguishes artfully piled-on ensembles from sloppy ones. Nothing was disheveled, but the mix didn't quite gel. The separates, however, were nice on their own. Araks pieces are best used as building blocks. A floor-skimming sleeveless black dress was austere at first glance, but had lovely pleats running down one side. Pair it with your own great accessories and it could be the perfect template for a favorite look.
—Alison Baenen

Azzaro

One could argue that red-carpet labels have it easier than their more broadly focused colleagues in times of recession. After all, they exist in a crystal-studded world where there has never been any pretense that their clothes are for the "normal woman," whoever that mythical beast may be. And no matter how badly the economy tanks—heck, even if there were a nuclear apocalypse—Ryan Seacrest will still be standing by a red carpet somewhere, demanding to know who Kate Bosworth is wearing.

On the other hand, there must be something a little weird designing intricately beaded and diamanté-dappled dresses while the news is still full of bankruptcy. Azzaro's Vanessa Seward seems to think so. In this collection, wisely shown as a small presentation in the store (Azzaro may be perfect for the celebrity market, but it still hasn't quite got the clout to withstand the pressure and expectation of a full-scale fashion show), she included a surprising amount of daywear and sober coats. Woman cannot live by diamanté alone.

But even these black and white dresses and tuxedo jackets had something of the starlet to them, not least because so many of them ended at the upper thigh. Some of the dresses had flippy little skirts, others had a stiffer bell shape, and the designer had particular fun with some louche seventies pieces, such as strapless jumpsuits. As if to prove that these wispy bits and bobs weren't only for Hollywood waifs, a very pregnant Seward sat in the audience sporting a white playsuit from the collection splattered with paw prints. These were supposed to represent the paws of her cat Monsieur Jo—who also made an appearance in Seward's last collection. This was clearly Seward's favorite part of her collection, as she couldn't resist jumping up, mid-presentation, and explaining the reference to the audience. How many Azzaro customers will feel as enthusiastic about Jo's contribution remains to be seen—though, to be fair, the cat-loving fashionista is a fairly well-established sub-demographic.

It was soon back to business as usual with plenty of long or mini black dresses, heavy with embellishment. Perhaps it is a sign of the times that the best were the ones that kept decoration to a seductive minimum, such as the floaty black minidress with sparkling black buttons. It turns out that not only can red-carpet brands work in the recession, in some ways they can be improved by it.
—Hadley Freeman

Badgley Mischka

Twinkling embellishments and stardust beading were a big part of the Badgley Mischka story. The reason for all the shiny finery, James Mischka revealed a few days before the show, was that he and design partner Mark Badgley (like a clutch of other designers this season) had been stargazing. Literally: They were poring over images captured by the Hubble telescope. "There's a galaxy feeling to our beading," Mischka remarked. Indeed, a short V-neck tank dress covered entirely with densely clustered gemstones had a river of citron running down the front and back like the Milky Way.

The show opened with 15 gala looks. A fluid jersey jumpsuit in navy represented the pants portion of the program; the rest were gowns, gowns, gowns. A long-sleeve, high-neck black matte jersey dress had starry epaulets, and the bodice of a pale mauve gown cascaded with quicksilver stones.

Most designers would be content to call it a day after a dozen-plus high-wattage frocks, but Badgley and Mischka took advantage of their captive audience to show a full collection from their contemporary line, Mark & James, too. Over-the-knee boots and second-skin pants in liquid mercury marked the demographic shift; skip the boots and wear the pants with one of the semi-destroyed bouclé knits for a debutante-goes-clubbing look. There were plenty of round-the-clock options in this act of the show, but it was hard to focus on the more familiar and workaday pieces when the memory of so many stellar dresses was still hanging in the ether.
—Alison Baenen

Balenciaga

Cosmonauts and seventies Formica. Packaging and food boxes. Synthetic foam and plywood. Sleeping bags and biscuits. "I was working on something domestic. Casual things mixed with classic. And a kind of rigidity," said Nicolas Ghesquière, listing some of the extraordinary imagery and manipulations of materials and color that went into Balenciaga's computer-age vision of couture.

Geometric, collaged, stiff yet rounded, and composed of zones of matte and shine, with cashmere dimpled to look like industrial foam and fur shaved into quilting, the components of the first coats alone were difficult enough to absorb at a glance. Then there were the shoes: block-heeled loafers and brogues with the soles encased in chunks of plastic. The fact that his work defies easy categorization—and there is so much in it that reminds the brain of things it's seen before, but isn't quite like them at all—is the hallmark of Ghesquière's complex methodology. It takes innovation to a place where "knitwear" turns into molded shifts and bunchily belted tops laid out in blocks of oddly bright colors—pale blue, tangerine, brown, and aqua—or is micro-padded in geometric patterns that might have originated in bubble wrap. It makes delicate "lace" dresses out of machine-perforated fabric, trimmed with embroidery ("like French biscuits!" Ghesquière laughed). It pushes silhouettes to do unfamiliar things: creating "wings" in the backs of dresses, or making triangular paper-printed tops that unfurl with a zipper in the front of skinny-legged salopettes.

This is fashion by a unique originator who sources all his ideas in the industrial, scientific, computer-generated possibilities of the twenty-first century. In different hands, it could be a predictable route to sci-fi fantasy or clichéd presentiments of a futuristic dystopia—but that is exactly what Balenciaga isn't. The aesthetic Ghesquière has launched with the aid of new machinery and haute traditional needlework techniques is recognizably Parisian, chic, optimistic, and of today. Some might call him out on the issue of wearability in certain areas, but fashion desperately needs experimenting talents like his to push things forward—and he did that with extraordinary skill today.
—Sarah Mower

Balmain

Sober, pared-down minimalism? Well, somebody has to kick against it, and there's no more likely a candidate to keep hot and sexy alive than Christophe Decarnin. This season, he's gone Baroque 'n' roll, with a Balmain outing pitched somewhere between Prince's Purple Rain pomp and Louis XIV at Versailles. Gold, brocade, frock coats, Louis-heeled ribbon-laced boots, sequin and lamé dresses galore: Decarnin went for it.

Clever move, on lots of levels. For one thing, shifting Balmain away from the distressed MASH-militaria of summer to a classier, dressier theme puts this notoriously expensive collection on a path where the value of the original can be clearly distinguished from the cheap knockoff. This show's highly elaborate, high-collared seventeenth-century cutaway coats and gilded jeans did that. From a cutting-expertise point of view, so did Decarnin's seventies/nineties tailored pantsuits, which showcased the return of the leg-lengthening, over-shoe flared pant. The idea, the designer said, came to him while looking at a seventies photo of a woman "in an impeccable Balmain couture menswear pantsuit," but the spirit was closer to the Tom Ford for Gucci look that is rising as part of the nineties redux theme of the season.

Still, those gold-buttoned pinstripes (albeit with a gold Lurex stripe, in one case) were the closest this collection's ever likely to come to workwear. Really, what the Balmain woman's hooked on is the competitive evening opportunity to flash as much leg and bosom as possible. She'll be thrilled to see there's no wavering in that department. Decarnin's short and tight paillette-smothered dresses kept the faith with the big-shouldered silhouette he's made a signature for several seasons—actually, one too many. A less obvious choice (if that's not a contradiction, in this context) would be the other Balmain mainstay: the long-in-back, short-in-front lamé gown, which still puts everything satisfactorily on display, while registering winter's play on length.
—Sarah Mower

Banana Republic

With military influences remaining such a strong trend both on and off the runway (every other person on Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg sports a green army jacket these days), it's no surprise Banana Republic's Fall 2010 collection was heavy on utility pieces. The retailer certainly knows a thing or two about the style—it originally peddled safari vests and field coats before being acquired and rebranded by Gap.

Creative director Simon Kneen turned out twill miniskirts, an olive-drab wool dress, and slim cargo pants, which he paired with washed silk frocks and great cardigans tailored to resemble ladylike jackets. "It's all about the modern mix," he said backstage. "Formalwear mixed with casual attire and sportswear." The mostly neutral procession of looks wasn't the most exciting big-brand collection we've seen, but Kneen's mix-it-up message speaks to the approach these companies must take now: "It's about the individual, rather than a uniformed look."
—Romney Leader

Band of Outsiders

Last season, we were on the beach in California. For Fall, Scott Sternberg took us to the snow-covered Manhattan suburbs. A chunky camel cardigan and scarf worn with brown plaid cuffed trousers and oversize blue-lens sunglasses gave off an Ice Storm vibe, though Sternberg said the writer Joan Didion was his muse for the paisley print blouses and dresses. He developed that print, by the way, by manipulating Polaroid images of silk ties. The designer's favorite REI hiking socks were another source of inspiration: He found a mill that produces a mélange wool that's not itchy, and he turned it into a turtleneck, a skirt, and even pants with reinforced knees. Among his other quirky ideas were platform sandals made from watch straps, a skirt sewn together from actual neckties, and… cutting a Jaguar in half for the set? This last element didn't, in fact, come to pass—too expensive—but Sternberg did pay a woman from upstate, with whom he connected on Craigslist, to borrow her old Jag for the night.

All fun and games? Not completely. What keeps people coming back—aside from the entertaining sets—is Sternberg's knack for tweaking (quite liberally at times) preppy American classics. Two examples: a sharp-looking double-breasted gray flannel jacket was paired with terry sweatpants, and a checked flannel shirt, buttoned to the neck and worn with slim corduroy trousers, came topped by a peacoat cut from silver fox. What Manhattan suburb was that again? We want to move in.
—Nicole Phelps

Barbara Tfank

Last season, Barbara Tfank created a few of her own prints for the first time; Fall saw her plunging headlong into graphic-design mode. The Fauvist painter Raoul Dufy, who designed stationery for Paul Poiret and textiles for Bianchini-Férier, was Tfank's guiding light. She produced a series of bright floral frocks with him in mind, including an off-the-shoulder dress with a pleated skirt that looked great in a morning-glory print of bright green and aquamarine; a nipped-waist long-sleeve dress in emerald, navy, and claret was also sweet. Tfank's conservative silhouettes may not appeal to most twentysomethings, but a subdued black silk crepe sheath looked supremely sexy on the model Damaris Lewis. (Sure, she models for Sports Illustrated, but the point is that Tfank's creations go great with curves.)

Another happy by-product of Tfank's print compulsion was her increased awareness of texture. "If I do something with black now, it has to be really special," she said. A midnight plissé taffeta dress with bodice-enhancing ribbon detailing fit that description perfectly.
—Alison Baenen

Basso & Brooke

Sign up for the fashion industry, see the world. Bruno Basso and Christopher Brooke's search for inspiration took them on a two-week trip down the ancient Silk Road to fabled Samarkand, where East originally met West millennia ago. It was a high-risk endeavor (they had to travel with a bodyguard), but it yielded dividends in the overload of colors, patterns, and textures they were exposed to. As per the usual division of labor, Basso translated these into the extraordinary engineered prints that are the duo's signature, and Brooke designed the pieces that carried the prints. The clothes were significantly more straightforward than usual, as Brooke sensibly focused on classic shapes: a parka, a shirtwaister, a coat-dress, or a jersey evening dress that was as simple as an elongated T-shirt from the front but dipped to the tailbone in back. With the prints being such minor masterpieces of complexity, why gild the lily with tricksy constructions?

Brooke also added solids such as a collarless camel coat and a jacket in maroon gabardine, like andante moments in Basso's symphony of color. And what a symphony it was. You know those scenes in Avatar where you just want to stop the movie and work out exactly what it is you're looking at? There were moments like that on the Basso & Brooke catwalk, when the print collages of marble, mosaic, textile, snakeskin, feathers, and gems teased the eye. It was more comprehensible, but scarcely less striking, when a single element was used, like the chevrons of roughly woven fabric printed on a fur-collared coat. The designers also used a new fabric treatment they called "a high-gloss aqua finish," which gave some prints a liquid 3-D sheen that was practically Pandora-perfect in every way.
—Tim Blanks

BCBG Max Azria

Entering a BCBG Max Azria show, you're never entirely sure what you're going to see. Designers Max and Lubov Azria have given themselves the creative license to take their big-business contemporary line in whichever direction they might be feeling, whether that's avant-garde, bohemian, or ladylike.

But this season found the Azrias in practical mode. Backstage, Mrs. Azria explained that the Fall collection was her answer to the recession. "It's made us realists," she said. "It's not about our fantasy. It's about the customer."

On the runway, there were endless variations of a simple, sellable, and yes, chic idea: color-blocked silks in clean geometric silhouettes layered with whisper-thin black knit tops. Dresses had a T-shirt-level ease and often came cinched with wide elastic belts. The layering of lightweight pieces was another customer-centric strategy. These dresses, as Mrs. Azria explained, can be worn right away when the Fall delivery goes into stores—i.e., in high summer—and then can transition into chillier months.

All in all, a smart play for the bottom line. The Azrias did allow themselves to dream a little, though, with occasional lashings of sequins and pieced-in panels of sheer pleats. After all, all practicality and no panache would make fashion a dull industry.
—Meenal Mistry

Behnaz Sarafpour

Behnaz Sarafpour explained her Fall collection as, "clothes that I'd want to wear and that women who I know would want to wear." Though it's slightly strange to hear a woman designer say that—it's the kind of thing you're more used to hearing on the men's side—Sarafpour's personal and practical approach made for one of her strongest collections in seasons. (Who doesn't want a camel coat with a massive raccoon collar?)

Despite the absence of an all-encompassing theme, the designer was mulling ideas about texture—something that seems to be going around the city this week. Here, it translated into clean and polished sportswear silhouettes made interesting by mixing and matching mohair, brocade, popcorn knits, and tweeds with flat wools and solid silks.

On the whole, it was a more pared-down look with less sweetness than Sarafpour usually adds, but her bread-and-butter cocktail dresses were still here and there: a jewel-toned sequined shift, a little number covered with chiffon petals. A black brocade shift with a subtly naughty lace-up back and wool panels stood out.

It could be because she opted for a presentation instead of a runway show that the clothes seemed more focused, but if it's something she continues going forward, the logistics may need to be smoothed out. The molasses pace of girls coming out onto the photo-shoot set defeated the purpose of a breezy pop-in, pop-out format.
—Meenal Mistry

Bensoni

Benjamin Channing Clyburn and Sonia Yoon gave their imaginary Fall muse a familiar backstory: A generous grandmother from Greenwich, Connecticut, has bequeathed her a new wardrobe, and she's had it tailored for a more modern fit.

The fit was fine. But there wasn't enough of the modern to push the collection forward—and at times it felt like Bensoni's girl was playing dress-up. A boxy mohair topper in two tones of scarlet was nice, for instance, but it screamed Camelot.

Fur, though, was a strong addition to the lineup. The best outerwear bet was a fox vest that, viewed from the back, revealed itself to be part cashmere sweater. An unusual print on a smart sheath dress in gray and white turned out to be a digital rendering of fox fur that somehow looked simultaneously organic and supernatural. Clyburn and Yoon have shown a flair for prints in the past; they should pursue this talent further.

Dresses, unfortunately, could have used a more rigorous edit. A series of asymmetrical and one-shouldered numbers cut short and inevitably ruched were hardly special, and with the addition of contrasting cross-body panels of fabric, unflattering. If the concept was a reworked gala gown, perhaps it would have been best to leave the gown as it was.

Missteps aside, Bensoni clearly has potential. Developing a string of go-to basics—including, say, their perfectly tailored skinny cotton-faille pants—would be a good start.
—Alison Baenen

Betsey Johnson

Betsey returned to the runway and—to prove her performance skills hadn't dulled—made sure all the high-camp high jinks of old were in place. Kelly Osbourne, looking model thin, came out first, walking on a hay-strewn surface. She exuberantly tore off the bandanna covering her face, and…yee-haw! We found ourselves in the Wild Wild West.

Johnson's inspiration this season was, modestly, 45 years' worth of her own archives. "I'm working on my stuff, being very true-blue Betsey," she said. Her signature gun prints were there in spades, accessorized with candy-bright plastic pistols; there were striped bodysuits and tutus. The models sashayed along in groups with monikers like Banditos, Madames, and Brothelettes, usually with one among their number clad in a sweater so long it required a union suit-clad male escort to carry it.

Lots of buy-now, wear-now Spring looks were added to the Fall catwalk lineup. "We're not in seasons anymore, anyway," Johnson said. "We'll show a little bit of now and a lot of later." She's always been a crowd-pleaser, above all else, and is canny enough to know that her most important audience is not so much the fashion editors and buyers in attendance, but the Betsey faithful around the globe.
—Alison Baenen

Bibhu Mohapatra

It hasn't been the most favorable economic climate for any young designer, let alone one trying to break into the eveningwear market. Credit Bibhu Mohapatra for being not only talented but adaptable. The designer's third collection was his strongest—and crucially, most rounded—to date. Two oft-cited films, Bernardo Bertolucci's Il Conformista and Fritz Lang's Metropolis, inspired the sophisticated daywear he developed for Fall. Strongest were the smartly tailored wool coats, a pencil skirt with brass buttons, and a chunky double-breasted cardigan trimmed in fur. The dresses, surprisingly, were more hit-or-miss. A pale hand-pleated chiffon number was pretty, but the label inside could easily have read J. Mendel (the designer's previous employer). A draped silk evening gown that floated across the model's body, on the other hand, struck just the right note. Mohapatra made an effort to tell a more complete story this season. It's a strategy that should pay dividends in the coming months.
—Romney Leader

Blumarine

Restrained, quiet, minimal sportswear? The idea of that ever happening at Blumarine is as about as easy to imagine as Silvio Berlusconi taking holy orders. This runway is one of Milan's last holdouts for women who demand full-on good-time dressing with a cheerful disregard for polite moderation—and from the commercial point of view, it's all the better for it. For Fall, the house devices are animal prints, tons of flirty fringing, lots of leather, suede, and crystal studding—a collection that blithely follows the Balmain principle of flouting obscure intellectual fashion pieties for the sake of accessible excess.

In the stylist Carlyne Cerf de Dudzeele, Anna Molinari, the house proprietor, has found a kindred spirit with a sense of humor and a clear idea of the point of it all. Just before the show went on, Cerf de Dudzeele declared, "J'adore it all! It's for the kind of girl a man wants to follow in the street." Well, job done, for those who are after that kind of result—and as Blumarine's ever climbing, recession-busting sales figures are proving, there are plenty of women all over the world who do want exactly that.
—Sarah Mower

Bottega Veneta

Many designers in Milan are cogitating about power women—that tricky, oft revisited subject that, unless approached with a questioning intelligence, produces nothing more original than yet another clichéd eighties skirtsuit. But there was nothing stereotypical about Tomas Maier's approach to the matter for Bottega Veneta. He put his thoughts forward in a bold and intense exploration that began with the uncompromising sight of two women in black leather pantsuits—an opener for a strangely paced series of chapters that, unusually in these days of one-message fashion shows, offered a huge sweep of intriguing options.

The modernity was in the span of it. This was a collection that had narrow, businesslike tailoring at one end; fluid jersey dresses and sporty parkas in the middle; and then concluded in a blast of candy pink silk. There was a lot to take in that was subtle yet strong—especially in daywear, and in Maier's mastery of fluid asymmetries honed to practical use rather than art for art's sake. The variety—semi-draped dresses, all-in-ones, A-line T-shirt tunics, two brilliantly simple trouser suits, and a couple of teddy-bear coats (a breaking trend)—only added to the overall sense that Maier gets the breadth of women's lives.

There was a weirdly pleasing darkness in the undercurrent, and that edged it away from feeling like a service-driven "career" collection. Some of that came from the oddly special molded-wedge boots, or the bags with an iridescent sheen of color inspired by beetle wings, or later the scarabs dangling from necklaces and earrings.

True, there was an odd moment too many (buckle-on leather carapace tops for cocktail?), but the full sweep of the evening options more than made up for that. This was an outstanding piece of work that moved forward into ideas fashion too rarely has the wit to touch.
—Sarah Mower

Brian Reyes

A glade of slender trees projected behind the runway marked two of Brian Reyes' creative stimuli this season. The first were the trees themselves. Following visits to Kew Gardens in London and the U.S. National Arboretum in Washington, D.C., Reyes designed this collection in an arboreal mood. The second was the Ukrainian artist Oksana Mas, who created the shadow backdrop and collaborated on several of the season's prints. In considering the trees, Reyes did the obvious (a lean, leggy silhouette) and the less obvious: the working garb of professional tree climbers and trimmers. The top of a gray silk dress was meant to resemble a harness—it looked like you could attach a carabiner to it and float away. A fabric with a parachute-y sheen contributed to the activewear element, too.

Mainly, though, the mood was soft and ethereally pretty, rather than sporty. The dresses and jackets were cleverly tailored, with curved seams like the concentric rings of trees. One of Mas' abstract prints looked great on a sleek little dress worn with a fox scarf with built-in pockets. Also of note were the sophisticated knits. An oversize bouclé jacket atop a matching pencil skirt was nubbly and chic. A puce knit T-shirt shot through with Lurex would make an excellent new wardrobe staple. Wear it with the teeny silk shorts shown underneath, and your boyfriend may never let you leave the house.
—Alison Baenen

Burberry Prorsum

There's only one problem with the jackets on the Burberry Prorsum runway for Fall: Which one to choose? It's the biggest accolade to Christopher Bailey that (a) that was a real and urgent dilemma, as the outerwear was available to pre-order instantaneously on the Burberry Web site, and (b) it would actually be impossible to go wrong. Every single one of his giant-collared shearlings, military-drab overcoats and parkas—and every hybrid thereof, in all their variations of volume, shape, shagginess, and leather strap and buckle detail—was utterly desirable. Bailey nailed it from the point of view of proportion—oversize and cropped—and practicality. He did it for women who like a frisson of showy seasonal fashion, and for those who want a coat that's destined for a long life in the hall closet. By 5 p.m. GMT, thousands of mouse-pointers all over the world were hovering in distress over which "Click to buy" button to press.

Backstage, among the seething crowd of paparazzi, film crews, and well-wishers, Bailey gave his word on where all this originated. "I was thinking of uniforms and cadet girls—but it all started when I looked at an aviator jacket in the archive. Then, as I started designing into it, I realized it could be as versatile as the trench—strong and sexy, masculine and feminine." And just before he was submerged in the next wave of kissing and congratulations, he turned and grinned: "And I really enjoyed it!"

Creatively, it certainly looked like he did. Burberry is on home ground here: not trying too hard, keeping at one authentically cool thing and exploding into a look that is simple to get, yet exists in a myriad of options, all of which take care to emphasize sex appeal. It's a simple equation: jacket; skimpy, drapey, lacy skirt; and a pair of amazing boots—either right up to the thigh or (again, the agony of choice!) shearling-lined and bristling with straps.

Was it more important, though, that there was a sensation with this show that the parameters of fashion—its presentation, communication, and selling—were finally being forced open as the world watched? It was globally live-streamed, viewed in 3-D by clusters of invited guests in New York, Tokyo, L.A., and Dubai: That much only seems semi-novel in a culture that's already assimilated the availability of show material in record time. What's new, and super-clever in this case, is the simultaneous pre-selling of the clothes on the runway—and for three days only. As a brilliant piece of fashion-business management, it was an Olympic-style streak ahead that will leave other competitors seething.
—Sarah Mower

Cacharel

Cacharel is to France what Liberty prints are to England, or L.L.Bean is to America: a heritage brand that owes its appeal more to sentimentality than cutting-edge style—and that is not necessarily a bad thing. Often the best fashion moments come from an emotional reaction, as opposed to a sober bit of chin stroking about the sophistication of cut.

But in the past few years, Cacharel has become better known for its revolving door of designers than its association with seventies vacations in Deauville. Moreover, the designers who came and went—including Britain's Clements Ribeiro and Eley Kishimoto—had pretty much taken the sentimentality shtick as far as it could go, with their sepia-tinted prints for the brand. For a while, Cacharel looked in danger of miring itself so much in the past it could well be swept back there.

But Cédric Charlier, the latest designer to take control, has done something very smart in this, his second collection for the label: Not only is he taking Cacharel forward, but he is taking it toward a gap that very much needed filling. Now that Miu Miu has gone so defiantly upmarket (never refer to it as a diffusion brand in Miuccia Prada's presence—that's a hot tip), there is little left for quirky teens and twentysomethings who want to look good but also pay their rent. Ladies, meet Cacharel.

Charlier—who worked with the impressive likes of Michael Kors at Celine and Saint Alber Elbaz at the Church of Lanvin—played on Cacharel's floral associations in this collection, but with a darker and thus more grown-up twist. Mini and oversize rosette patterns were against a black background, undercutting the sweetness, and there were some excellent floral dresses with sophisticated folds and pleating. Similarly, the winter coats were oversize with shoulders sloping downward, proving that Cacharel can join in on the trends seen in some of the more haute labels this season—not least at Lanvin, where there were some strikingly similar toppers. Alber, you have trained your man well.
—Hadley Freeman

Calvin Klein Collection

Today's Calvin Klein Collection show began with a musical composition and light show by Alva Noto (a.k.a. Carsten Nicolai) specially conceived for the occasion. The room went dark and spotlights that looked vaguely like stacked vertebrae pulsated to the rhythm of the soundtrack. It was a fittingly conceptual beginning for Francisco Costa's Fall lineup, which was pared down in the extreme.

The designer opened with a streamlined collarless coat in lustrous black cupro. Its molded, rounded shoulders and full sleeves turned up later in a double-faced wool suit jacket worn with a wrap skirt, as well as in an ivory crepe and leather long-sleeve T-shirt teamed with matching high-waisted, cropped pants. If the stiff, sculptural shapes of these pieces weren't the most flattering, Costa's two other areas of interest this season—regimented tailoring and shift dresses—paid more careful attention to the lines and curves of the female body.

A midnight blue trench in stretch technical wool had a commanding presence. (The fact that Stella Tennant wore it probably helped; along with Kirsty Hume and Kristen McMenamy, the nineties supe was there to represent the golden era of minimalism.) A hammered-cashmere cape, two curving arches cut away from its hem, was equally dramatic. As for Costa's sleeveless shifts, what made them compelling was their glossy, liquid-mercury fabrics or, alternately, their calla lily-inspired draped shapes. Evening was represented by a trio of silver silk Lurex columns with subtle gridlike embroideries. They aren't exactly red-carpet-friendly (sorry, front-row attendees Kerry Washington, Kate Bosworth, Isabel Lucas, and Naomi Watts). But in their spare simplicity—like the best pieces in this collection—they're undeniably cool.
—Nicole Phelps

Carlos Miele

The colorful, curve-hugging gowns Carlos Miele sent out today on the bodacious Constance Jablonski showed the designer in his element. "I wanted everything to feel glamorous and positive," he said backstage, holding up a color-blocked purple, red, and fuchsia charmeuse dress. Miele has reason to be looking on the bright side: The economy in his native Brazil has rebounded far more quickly than other countries from the global recession.

The focus wasn't just on festive frocks, though. Cropped fox jackets and swingy astrakhan coats played a role, and the designer mixed in a 100 percent organic denim trouser from his lower-priced jeans line. Handworked details, another Miele signature, felt too craft-y in the case of a bolero constructed from loops of fabric and chains, but the rosette detail on a gold minidress—sewn by favela residents the designer trains and employs—was as subtle as those gowns were bold.
—Romney Leader

Carolina Herrera

In her last couple of outings, Carolina Herrera has explored the arty side of her oeuvre, getting baroque with her fabric combinations or heavily embellishing them. That's been to the detriment of her refined, elegant message and, no doubt, to the quiet despair of the ladies who love it. So it was a positive development that she came back to the ultra-luxe side of things for Fall, and for the most part, employed a lighter, more familiar hand. The designer limited herself to brushstroke prints and floral embroideries, while letting silhouette, bold colors like Prussian blue and deep red, and sable fur (plenty of it) do the talking.

Delivering on her "Lady of the Sleeves" reputation, Herrera puffed up the volume on the arms of day dresses and off-the-shoulder evening versions alike. There was a fullness, too, to high-waisted, fluid trousers that were paired with grand white blouses or statement-making jackets and coats—the former in, say, crocodile with matching wool sleeves, and the latter in camel double-faced cashmere and sable. The teenage models inevitably strained to pull off these looks as confidently as the rather older target customer eventually will. After all, these ladylike clothes require the kind of bank balance and sophisticated good taste it takes a few years to attain.

The evening dresses will be no less pricey, but they're likely to find a wider audience. Ranging from an understated strapless black faille column to an embroidered tulle confection with a pouf below the knees, they look destined for heavy rotation on the social circuit. A silk moiré number with a chic organza bolero, in particular, will have Herrera's gals fighting for first dibs. The disconnect between day and night was a bit jarring, but the collection nonetheless felt more like familiar Herrera territory than her recent efforts, and was the better for it.
—Nicole Phelps

Celine

There could almost have been a Celine convention going on in the tennis club where Phoebe Philo showed her second collection for the label. Up and down the ranks, dozens of women were proudly displaying their Celine allegiance in camel coats, tux jackets, wide-legged high-waist pants, silk blouses, leather T-shirts, silver-heeled boots, and sandals. Almost the entire Spring collection was there somewhere, save for the sheer trousers (and it's a fair bet someone has those at home).

That the above bears noting is a gauge of the huge significance of Philo's comeback. What she accomplished in restoring the status of rational, classy daywear last season has finally shattered the personal-purchasing moratorium that set in with the recession. Now women have seen what they want, impulse buying is back, and the atmosphere in the house was strumming with the collective will that Philo would follow up with more to keep the spending valves open.

She did so in wave after wave of clothes that fed the pent-up desire for grown-up, flattering, simple but sexy dressing. In her own words: "Strong. Powerful. Reduced." Narrow navy funnel-necked coats and dresses, slim cropped-at-the-ankle kick flares, A-line skirts, and cream silk blouses started it off—all styled in a no-fuss manner with sheer black tights, riding boots, or high-heeled loafers. At a stroke, it carried the wholeness, simplicity, and confidence of a definitive look, perfectly judged and attainable.

Part of the genius is the way Philo has reframed the sullied term "luxury" by harnessing the DNA of Celine—a Parisian bourgeois sportswear label that was at peak fashionability in the seventies. Her skillful deployment of leather is part of that. She did it with her placement of deep, smooth patch pockets on the sides of shifts and peacoats, as well as in her Helmut Newton-esque black patent wrap skirts and a black double-breasted military trench, belted with a domed brass buckle.

The variety of Philo's outerwear was amazing—spanning a chic-casual navy hooded parka-coat hybrid, slim three-quarter jacket-coats, and a stunning cream teddy-bear shearling cape. Alongside that, a plethora of daywear options focused on separates—a refreshing breakaway from the dress obsession that has stuck fashion in a rut for too long. For evening, she sustained that sense of practical reserve in a cutaway pantsuit with a tunic fluttering beneath it, and two outfits with sculpted black paillettes. None of it was body-baring, none of it showy. Yet it still exuded the calm sense of assured sexuality that adult women have been waiting for since Helmut Lang left the runway. The fact that Philo chose to stage this show in the very venue in which he presented his final collection can't have been a coincidence. In her own feminine way, she is picking up the cause for women exactly where he left off.
—Sarah Mower

Central Saint Martins

Once a year, the graduation show of Central Saint Martins' M.A. course gives not just a sighting of new talent but, increasingly, a strong fashion direction of its own. The class of 2010, to judge from the 22 collections on Professor Louise Wilson's runway, is over the short, tight, sexy, glittery, printed things their elders are still turning out. This cohort likes geometry, flat planes of matte fabric, and pleating. They sculpt 3-D shapes in tailoring and jersey, knit raffia into amazing volumes, and push silhouettes to new attenuated-ly elegant proportions.

Is this a uniquely London thing? Only in its precociously professional standards of production and finish. (Professor Wilson demands no less.) In fact, the student body at this school is a truly international mix. Most of this year's graduates are Scandinavian, Asian, Russian, and American, with only a smattering of Brits. That's the nature of British fashion education now, and its energy feeds back into the vibrant multiracial culture that has been seeded in this city over the past few years. When they leave, these individuals will have internalized a sense of who they are and what it means to be original. Some will go on fully prepared to take up responsibilities in design teams around the world. Others, more likely, will want to stay in London, ready to compete with each other in a capital that, despite the recession, continues to encourage young designers to set up on their own.
—Sarah Mower

Cerruti

Cerruti, the French tailoring label, hasn't had much of a profile in womenswear for several seasons, but on October 1 last year, the company signed the London-based Australian designer Richard Nicoll to revive its credibility. In the short time he's been there (while shuttling to and fro on Eurostar), Nicoll has identified the house strength in daywear and set about recasting it for a modern woman's working life. One of the ways he does that is through tonal color, matching cranberry shades in a single look, then grays; moving into a strong passage of petrol, teal blue, and navy; and then into unconventional pastel tones of apricot and beige-pink.

Yet being allocated the last-but-one slot in four weeks of shows didn't do the management any favors. While scores of editors were streaming home after Hermès, or struggling in traffic across town to make Miu Miu, Cerruti had chosen to show in the bleak, out-of-town cluster of abandoned warehouses the Chambre Syndicale of Paris has christened "Halle Freyssinet"—and which some international fashion professionals have taken to calling "Hell."

Overall, there was not enough here to make a fair evaluation of the soundness of Nicoll's ideas about dressing working women. His mohair knits certainly have a fluffy appeal, as does the windowpane check tailoring, but notions like pants in see-through perforated fabric and latex skirts and leggings aren't going to fly. Next season, Cerruti would be better off taking their presentation back home to their classy, light-filled showroom in the center of Paris, walking distance from where their customers live, work, and stay on business.
—Sarah Mower

Chado Ralph Rucci

After last season's seating snafus at the Bryant Park tents, Ralph Rucci decided to use the large space in his Soho atelier as he'd always intended to—as a salon-style show venue. Stalwart fans like Martha Stewart and Deeda Blair were there, as was André Leon Talley, who's turning the designer into a household name, wearing custom-made cloaks of Rucci's creation in his new role as a judge on America's Next Top Model.

Up close and personal, you could really appreciate the remarkable techniques and exquisite indulgences Rucci is known for. Say, for instance, a cocktail number made from panels of black tulle with feathers suspended inside, or another pieced together from individually cut swatches of ivory chiffon, each embroidered with its own guinea-fowl feather. The designer spared no expense with day looks either, splicing wool jersey dresses with panels of asymmetrically hand-tucked taffeta and tulle, and quilting silk moiré and cashmere jackets and coats along the lines of the moiré patterns. They'll cost a fortune, but hey, they're reversible.

The furs, too, were something to marvel at, be it a sable and horsehair coat that spiraled around the body like a slinky, or a younger, hipper style knit together from mink and fox. Young and hip aren't adjectives necessarily associated with this designer, but how else to describe a body-loving, plunge-front floor-scraper in matte black sequins? Rucci has had trouble connecting with the downtown crowd in the past. This show could go some way to correcting that. For starters, now they'll know he's in their neighborhood.
—Nicole Phelps

Chalayan

In these days of reduced budgets and the pressure to sell clothes, the art of the fashion show as theater—which Hussein Chalayan and Alexander McQueen both pushed to a pinnacle of creativity in London in the nineties—has, much to the detriment of audience fulfillment, been shoved to the back of the agenda. Now meanings and messages are often delivered only aurally, but in some hands they can still be powerfully affecting. Such was Chalayan's voice-over preface, a tribute to McQueen, in which he honored his peer as a man whose work probed a raw, dark beauty and through his work became a mythical hero himself.

Sound was also the guide to understanding Chalayan's theme for Fall: a car engine firing up, followed by snatches of radio-station music and weather reports gleaned from across the U.S.A. He was on a road trip. Once you tuned in, it was clear he was setting off from New York, with a clever observation of the urban mix of tailored coats, jeans, hoodies, and sneakers that has become a city street uniform since the nineties. Soon, we were heading through Pennsylvania and Amish land, as the hoods took on the structure of bonnets, and the modern world was briefly silenced. From there, Chalayan took a turn south, making glitter-sleeved, formfitting dresses with diagonal necklines suggesting beauty-pageant sashes. Then it was out through hurricane country: Steel gray pleated twister dresses whipped around the body, then up and over the head, accompanied by emergency on-the-spot updates from a radio reporter.

In a way, this narrative is too literal an explanation for either Chalayan's thinking, or the fact that the clothes followed a completely wearable, on-track route for Fall. On one level, the collection traced the concerns with landscape, history, environmental crisis, ethnography, and culture that have always informed his work. On the other, Chalayan's American explorations allowed him to tick off trends and stop by every category needed in the span of a day-to-evening, casual-to-formal collection. Somewhere in Utah, he brought up a shearling coat with matching binoculars and a camel poncho. Later on, he worked through sportswear in gray sweats and then, maybe on the West Coast, arrived at a place where sinuously glamorous full-length gowns (beaded in dégradé patterns suggesting headlight flashes at night on a dark freeway) made complete sense.
—Sarah Mower

Chanel

Freja Beha Erichsen and three bears on an ice floe. This was the arctic scene at Chanel, where giant chunks of bona fide iceberg, specially transported from Scandinavia, formed the frozen landscape around which models solemnly splashed through a sea of 'berg-melt in shaggy snow boots with ice-block heels.

The Karl conceit of the season, no surprises, was an in-every-way extravagant play on Coco in cold weather. Using more fur than he'd even flung at Fendi—the twist being that here the fur was fake—Lagerfeld steered this collection nearer to couture than ready-to-wear than ever. Fur was woven into brown tweeds; formed deep pelmets on the lower half of leather jackets; became almost igloo-shaped capes, bonnets, even—for goodness' sake—furry trousers. Meanwhile, the suit and coat combinations also had a level of lavish elaboration usually reserved for haute eveningwear. Fur-fringed embroideries and ice jewelry conspired to create intensely worked ruffled and beaded silhouettes that glinted with rock-crystal neckpieces and fistfuls of rings. Somewhere in there, a flash of translucent silver seemed to be a clutch in which the quilting of the CC classic bag had been frozen into the likeness of a refrigerator ice cube tray.

It was a lucky stroke that the weather outside had kindly assisted Chanel in whipping subzero winds around the Grand Palais while this display was going on. Since humans are suggestible, it took only the merest suspension of disbelief to imagine this collection hitting the mark next fall, despite the fact that it will start to be delivered in July—and who knows in which century we'll have another winter like this one? Nevertheless, putting global warming and the melting of ice caps both center stage and on the back burner (as it were), this show swept the audience along as they were treated to such amusements as seeing Karl Lagerfeld's favorite, Baptiste Giabiconi, swagger out of an ice cave in a full-length polar bear coat.

It wasn't all played for laughs. Within the context of a season of innovative knitwear, Chanel's was some of the most outstanding. A group of three short angora sweater dresses, tinted iceberg blue in the center, was an amazing follow-up from something Lagerfeld did with dégradé pastel embroidery in couture. One gray and black cardigan coat was knitted in a bubbly grid to mimic a down-filled puffer. And the finale was given to a wedding dress knitted in silk tulle ribbon to resemble Chanel's bouclé tweed, forming a tight-fitting sweater in the body and then sweeping away in flounces in back. The bride—Freja, again—dangled an ice-block purse on a fur-woven Chanel chain.
—Sarah Mower

Charles Anastase

Finally, Fall fashion acknowledges the Copenhagen conference on climate change. Charles Anastase called his new collection "Winter Garden" to mark the discombobulation of a world where exotic summer fruits and flowers are available in the chill dead of winter. His message was slightly diffused by the fact that he chose a woman he called "a crazy gardener" to embody the concept. That immediately made me picture the eccentric chatelaine of a grand English estate. Was I wrong?

There was certainly enough eccentricity to indulge anyone's random reading of the clothes. Proportions were elongated: high-waisted pants flaring to the floor; dresses long, clinging, with a kick pleat; coats huge and blanketlike. This chatelaine probably lived in the forties, but the seventies certainly loved her style, particularly those pants. Though Anastase chose cheerful colors like pink and yellow, he also opted for heavy felted wools. In keeping with the climate-change warning (one model had a skull painted on her face), there wasn't much levity. What little there was came in the form of a plissé smock over Chinese silk pants (now, that is crazy gardening) or the outfit that featured a drop-waist yellow dress draped with tulle covered in naïf appliqués. I'll give Anastase one thing: He creates images that spin around your head for hours.
—Tim Blanks

Charlotte Ronson

The full-time traveler was on Charlotte Ronson's mind for Fall, but not the business-class type. Hers was a peripatetic seventies gypsy, too busy seeing the world to get caught up in the Studio 54 thing. The overall mood was of fluid, thrown-together sexiness. Vagabond wear included long pleated skirts in raspberry, rust, and floral prints; they looked great with belted tunics and hammered-silk tanks. An army green utility cape and a gray cocoon jacket added a dose of functionalism, while a sheer black lace blouse was pure form. We could have done without the shiny harem pants that joined the caravan, but—playful turbans and all—it was an eclectic mix that worked.
—Alison Baenen

Chloé

Beige, beige, and more beige. It's no news by now that the paler shade of brown, and the grown-up daywear it connotes, have become mainstays of the season. It's the route Chloé has taken for Fall, with such thorough commitment that until halfway through, it almost seemed Hannah MacGibbon was reluctant to offer anything else.

From the outset, she whittled the look down to its clearest components: a long-sleeved silk blouse and high-waist flared trousers, and the bouncy, blown-out Charlie girl hair that captures the seventies American sportswear attitude this trend is all about. Next up, MacGibbon introduced knitwear, classic menswear overcoats, and an early-Armani-like jacket that might have jumped out of Vogue's pages in the post-women's lib era—when dashing to work while looking enthusiastically businesslike was the thing.

It's a feeling, of course, that MacGibbon shares with her British female designer peers Phoebe Philo and Stella McCartney, who both passed through the Chloé studio some while back. They left the label with a reputation for girly dressing, jingly-jangly It bags, and statement shoes, but now that they're all into their thirties, these young professionals are leading a different life.

MacGibbon's house-cleaning instinct has thrown out the all the frills, prints, funny bags, and chunky clogs and platform shoes that last made Chloé hot. The bags have been stripped of hardware and logos, and the footwear renovated as sidewalk-friendly caramel riding boots and springy-soled wedges. The flirty, blowy dresses, once the Chloé signature, have been axed. The hip-girl, slightly streetwise element that used to be part of the personality here was this season reduced to a mild play on western styling—a minor outbreak of leather fringing and one pair of velvet, gold-embroidered jeans that turned up in the second half.

In terms of brand differentiation, though, that leaves a conundrum for buyers. Chloé's offering for Fall puts the label in direct competition with what so many others are producing now. It left some puzzlement over whether leaving the house's youth behind is such a wise move.
—Sarah Mower

Chris Benz

Outward Bound Debutante was the title for Chris Benz's latest effort. "It's inspired by those bad girls I knew in high school," he said. "The ones who got sent away to wilderness camp. This is what I imagine them wearing."

A gold anorak, a hand-crocheted tank dress, cargo jackets with fur trim… Benz's vision was definitely more Troop Beverly Hills than backwoods rehab, but somehow it made sense. Highlights included a violet and mustard plaid blazer with jewel-encrusted lapel, a simple but distinctive metallic sweatshirt, and any of the mid-calf-length eveningwear, which the designer described as "so nineties," though they actually felt totally modern. (The neon yellow fur-trapper hats and mittens, however, might not make it beyond the runway.)

Benz is not the go-to for basic tees or classic trousers, nor does he try to be. "I want every piece I produce to be incredibly special," he said. Luckily, his unique point of view all but guarantees him a niche in the market.
—Romney Leader

Christian Cota

Inspired by Cubism, Christian Cota decided to see what would happen if he turned his soft draping into hard lines. The outcome, for the most part, was a confident and polished collection from one of New York's most buzzed-about young designers. Invoking Cubist methodology, Cota pulled things apart and then put them together again. A short, strapless faille gown in an abstract zebra print was actually two dresses in one: He made the first in black mesh, the other in the print, cut them apart, and then combined them. The puzzlelike result had extremely clean lines and an appealing volume. Another dress had a basket weave of hand-painted blue and gold leather across the bodice and down the skirt. The handiwork was obvious, but instead of looking crafty it was graphic and slightly futuristic.

Cota developed three of this season's prints in his bathroom. A palette's worth of paint was splashed onto a sheet in his tub, and then digitally rendered. Ultimately, he ended up with the same design viewed from three different perspectives. The best called to mind the blurred headlights of cars moving fast on a city street. It looked hip on a short skirt paired with a sleeveless chiffon top in another of the print's iterations. Cota has tremendous breadth, and last season he was hampered by his attempt to do too much at once. His artistic vision is still a work in progress, but this collection had a cohesiveness the last one lacked.
—Alison Baenen

Christian Dior

With a clap of thunder, the neigh of a horse, and the clippety-clop of coconut shells on the opening soundtrack, it wasn't hard to see where John Galliano was going with Fall. Dior's ready-to-wear was equestrian-themed, a follow-on from the daywear strand of the acclaimed Couture show in January. After Karlie Kloss had swept on, swirling a brown leather highwayman's cape over a ruffled pink chiffon dress and brown thigh boots, the narrative was established: This was to be a brisk albeit slightly perfunctory trot around the circuit of Galliano's longtime favorite eighteenth-century redingote shapes, hacking jackets, and jodhpurs, interspersed with many more of the little chiffon dresses.

As the show took a detour into citified country clothes—checked wool pencil skirts, baker boy caps, and a blanket coat in mohair—it was the knitwear that ended up commanding the most attention. This is, after all, the season where unexpected ways of knitting have been a focal point in such influential collections as Prada and Dolce & Gabbana. Dior's answers were a cream oversize cardigan-coat, threaded through with blue satin ribbon, and two lacy raschel-knit dresses.

The whole impression? Item by item, there was plenty to go on, from the furs—treated to a new technique that mimics dressy layered frills, edged with an eyelash fringe—to the heavily reiterated thigh boot to the dirty-pastel georgette evening gowns. The drawback was the number of georgette dresses in the show, which tipped it at times too far in the direction of the things Galliano does in his own collection.
—Sarah Mower

Christian Siriano

Aside from the wafting dry-ice smoke and thumping techno, Christian Siriano opened his show on a surprisingly untricky note—a stylish black-leather peplum jacket and pencil skirt that would elicit neither silly catchphrases nor eyebrow-raised double takes. Like it or not, this is Siriano's fourth outing on the non-Project runway, and he's making an effort to transition from reality television into plain-old-vanilla reality. According to his notes, this collection was inspired by the head-to-toe propriety of European women in the sixties. And so the dramatics of seasons past were all but excised, leaving passably chic coats, cocktail frocks, blouses, and pencil skirts with a flourish here and there, but little to tell you about a designer's vision. (Not that we're encouraging the mad hattery of previous shows.) Backstage, Siriano said his niche was glamour, but to really move forward, he'll have to expand that one-dimensional notion into something more original and thoughtful.
—Meenal Mistry

Christopher Kane

The first sight of what Christopher Kane does always entails a kind of sick stomach lurch, that slight vision-changing nausea brought on by witnessing something cheap and tasteless being transformed into fashion at speed—and not being able to tell quite how you're going to feel about it. This season, it was black leather embroidered with flowers patterned after parochial Women's Institute craftwork that did the queasy job. Spliced together with black lace and tailoring into a peculiarly Kane construct of prim and perverted, it was, in his words, "about a delinquent teenager." But then again, it always is, round here.

The identity of this young woman shifts slightly each season, of course. This time, she started off as a schoolgirl Scots-lassie gone to the bad, a wearer of kilts (a Kane take on the A-line skirt with a flat front and swishy pleats in back) and tarty platform-soled gillies. In the second half, she assimilated the attributes of Priscilla Presley, the 14-year-old bride, decked out in dresses paneled in patent leather studded with multicolored jewels. Looked at closely, the starburst embroideries had double-edged resemblances to Elvis' show costumes on the one hand and church reliquaries on the other. Kane laughed about that: "Well, she was a good Catholic girl, you know!"

As ever, all the references here somehow tie back into Kane's provincial Scottish Catholic upbringing and his bond with his sister Tammy, who he loved to dress to go out when she was a teen. Together, they're now running a mini-brand that already has recognizable staples: short, flirty party dresses; seasonally updated cashmeres (made in Scotland, by Johnstons); and an established heroine item in the reworked biker jacket—this season's is a totally stunning black patent flower-embroidered version with a white shearling collar. That's mighty impressive for a young designer—then there's the fact that he now also designs Versus for Donatella Versace and a line for Topshop. Still, he's at an age where he can stretch and experiment, and for all his focus and business acumen, Kane needs to be mindful not to get trapped in his own short-and-sexy formula. Fashion needs brains like his to move things on.
—Sarah Mower

Clements Ribeiro

Suzanne Clements and Inacio Ribeiro called their new collection "Haute Bohemia" in honor of their favorite moment from the seventies, when Yves Saint Laurent and the Parisian jeunesse dorée were adding new colors to decadence. It was specifically YSL's epochal Russian moment that Clements Ribeiro picked up on. "Opulence for day-to-day life," was how Inacio described it. So there was a luxe overload of print, embroidery, and appliqué in the clothes, but always with a slightly eccentric English ease.

The collection's definitive outfit was probably a languid cardigan appliquéd with crystal embroidery, layered over a paisley blouse and gilded jacquard pants tucked into Cossack boots. On paper, it reads as extravagantly costumey, but in the flesh the extravagance had a winningly casual quality, just like the style of Loulou de la Falaise, the YSL muse who has always been Clements Ribeiro's benchmark. In fact, they named one look after her. A few menswear looks inspired by the fellows in the YSL gang offered a semi-respite from the richness. There was a navy peacoat, for instance, and a fur-collared camel coat, plus one in gray flannel whose frogged closing was scarcely less ornate than the detailing on a little gay hussar jacket in black astrakhan wool. Suzanne and Inacio built their old business on an idiosyncratic combination of seductive luxury and reassuring ease. It looks like history is about to repeat.
—Tim Blanks

Collette Dinnigan

Designer Collette Dinnigan didn't make the 19-hour trip to Paris this season from Sydney, but her Fall collection did. And from the looks of the pretty dresses hanging on the racks at Le Meurice hotel, the trend toward returning to your roots has made it all the way Down Under. The Aussie dress specialist embraced lace, the fabric with which she had her first success. Most of the frocks came in user-friendly black, and with their lean, to-the-body shapes, they could quite easily make the leap from cocktail hour to the office with the addition of a jacket. Dinnigan had one of those with silk cord embroidery on the front, but she smartly left tailoring to the professionals, building the day portion of her lineup with printed jersey wrap dresses and a casual cotton lace style with flouncy short sleeves. Channeling disco goddesses and fairy princesses, her special-occasion offerings ranged from a strapless mosaic mirror minidress to a one-shoulder gown with floaty tulle skirts in a shade of baby pink. Don't be surprised if you see the latter racking up some air miles to L.A. for Sunday night's red-carpet proceedings.
—Nicole Phelps

Comme des Garçons

Rei Kawakubo is at her most effusive when she gives two words rather than one to account for a collection. "Inside decoration" was her description for Fall, but that still leaves a lot of room for others to stab around at what the clothes looked like, and what they were about. If indeed they can be said to be about anything other than an exercise in pure form.

Pillow-form outcrops of padding placed on shoulders, hips, backs, and bodices were the essence of Kawakubo's experiments this time. In resolute defiance of conventional notions of female body enhancement, they added bulk and heft to all the places fashion avoids if it seeks to flatter and make sexy—two things that have never been part of the job description Kawakubo has accepted. We are on different terms here, forced into the field of the visual associations the designer triggers, rather than struggling to sum it up in the usual ways.

It's funny where the mind goes when that happens. What, for instance, were the coiled sections of interior padding arranged between waist and knee in garments that can loosely—very loosely—be described as shorts? Were they something akin to the folds of a shar-pei's skin, or (dare we think it?) a reference to intestines? Then, when Kawakubo turned from black to white, were the smooth, undulating mounds on the skirts starting to look like freshly fallen drifts of snow? Beautiful, but was it intended?

For students of Comme des Garçons, the hunchbacked and pigeon-breasted zones of wadding might be reminiscent of the notorious "lumps and bumps" collection of Spring 1997. That landmark work has kept fashion theoreticians writing treatises ever since, but it's never been satisfactorily explained, and certainly no further elucidation has ever come from Kawakubo. Her work is only ever offered as a fashion Rorschach test, within which we find out about what discomfits, annoys, confounds, and maybe tickles us when our expectations are denied. In the age of instant communication from shows, the impenetrability of Kawakubo's design at this particular moment might also be construed as a piece of passive resistance to dumbed-down commentary. Capture this one in 140 characters, Twitterati!
—Sarah Mower

Costello Tagliapietra

A recent trip to Japan set Jeffrey Costello and Robert Tagliapietra off: "We started thinking about traditional Japanese fashion, and early-eighties Comme, and Yohji, which we love," Tagliapietra said backstage the night of the show.

The duo are self-described math nerds who can spend hours poring meticulously over their patterns—they're not exactly known as avant-garde—but an admission of being in a Kawakubo state of mind is always a sure tip-off that experimentation will follow. Sure enough, you could see a more sculptural and off-kilter quality to their signature draping, even if it didn't hit you in the face. Spiraled and compressed folds added substance and weight to one look's waist, while on another the pleats seemed almost spontaneously draped around the body. The designers tried out an interesting new technique on their signature jersey dresses and tops, anchoring them with woven silk backs, usually in a contrasting color plucked from their beautiful palette of desert-sunset hues. But for all that, there was actually a gorgeous simplicity to this collection. It marked both a return to their founding vision and a step forward.
—Meenal Mistry

Costume National

Ah, Costume National: the label where hems must be high and leather isn't so much an option as a staple. There is nothing wrong with this kind of molto-sexy-with-a-tough-edge signature style—after all, it's far better than the brand having no style at all. But you sometimes suspect that designer Ennio Capasa and his label would be better served by showing the collection at home in molto sexy Milano as opposed to très chic Paris, where the show can come across like a thigh-high boot accidentally placed in the kitten-heel section of a shoe store.

Yet perhaps the city is rubbing off a little on Capasa, because this was a relatively toned-down collection. Sure, the hems were still up around the hip-bone area, but the clothes themselves came in soft grays and browns, wool and mohair—a cleansing effect after last season's leather short shorts. There were some very good trouser suits that achieved Costume's necessary sexy quotient, thanks to the excellent fit. The cleverly morphed thicker materials of the short dresses—that wool and mohair—almost seemed designed to distract the eye from the models' upper thighs, although perhaps that only works on fashion editors as opposed to, say, footballers.

Quite how any of this fit in with Capasa's surprising source of inspiration, Henry David Thoreau's Walden, a nineteenth-century book about self-imposed isolation and self-discovery, is anyone's guess. Maybe it just suggests that Capasa is beginning to resist the Italian nightclub scene, staying home instead with a good book and a cup of cocoa. Well, a good book and a glass of Champagne.
—Hadley Freeman

Cushnie et Ochs

With new designers, growth spurts often come fast and furious. Days before their show, Carly Cushnie and Michelle Ochs reported that Spring's collection, only their third so far, had tripled the label's orders and lured heavyweights like Neiman Marcus. But today's show was evidence that Cushnie et Ochs' forward strides aren't limited to the sales books. Working in a concise and stark palette of black, ivory, and a small array of browns, the pair focused on texture and construction. As unsexy as that might sound, it was plenty exciting to see panels of glossy black ponyskin set into the front of a beautiful double-face wool coat, or the polka-dotlike holes in a black leather pencil skirt paired with a black mesh knit. It's an approach that resulted in the double benefit of clothes that were luxurious and commercial in the best sense.

Dresses, a label mainstay, evolved from the extreme body-con look of seasons past. Most were still fitted and sleek, but it was a subtler brand of sexiness. A standout crisscross draped number that was the color of chocolate ice cream had best-seller appeal. Still, last season Cushnie and Ochs started to branch out from being so fixated on frocks, and that came to fruition here. Their outerwear and separate pieces for both day and night were among the most exciting offerings. That's not to say this was a perfect collection. In fact, it suffered from a few clunky moments. The sparkly, padded suit would be flattering on no one. And an ivory dress with snaking sculptural ruffles just seemed immature next to the far chicer ensemble of a crinkle-textured crewneck tucked into a sideswept draped skirt. The latter direction is the way this label should keep going as it maintains its rapid clip.
—Meenal Mistry

Cynthia Rowley

Other designers may lament the lag time between clothes' debut on a runway and their real-world on-sale date—but Cynthia Rowley actually tackled the issue head-on. Partnering up with the Gagosian Shop, she is offering arty limited-edition duplications of her latest looks: Rowley's team took photos of each garment from the front and back, printed the images onto fabric, and cut them out in the shape of the original. The quick copies were available the night of the show.

The "chic monster-girl collection" was how Rowley described Fall, and it was heavy on volume and texture. The volume was delivered in oversize puffer coats, airy skirts with bubble hems, and a patterned silk dress with rows of ruching. Texture was added with an abundance of feather and fringe trim on everything from blouses to cropped jackets.

"There's already a wait list for these pieces," Rowley said of her faster-fashion solution, the day before, "meaning people are trying to buy versions of Fall '10 before I even show them. How crazy is that?"
—Romney Leader

Cynthia Steffe

In the two years since Shaun Kearney's been at the creative helm of Cynthia Steffe, several of the country's biggest retailers have renewed their previously dormant accounts. What is he doing right? Absorbing elements of street style—like the girls he spotted in Williamsburg mixing fatigue jackets with ruffles and tweed—and turning out modern looks that add a touch of edge to the brand's sweet silhouettes. For Fall, he showed slouchy-skinny Donegal pants, cropped sweaters paired with tiny pleated skirts, and a standout Mongolian curly lamb vest. Although the show dragged at times with one too many takes on the schoolgirl motif, Kearney ended on a high note by showing a short, distressed-sequin dress with an oversize, fur-trimmed moleskin parka. It's not groundbreaking, but the classics-with-a-twist approach should have wide appeal.
—Romney Leader

D&G

The wood-cabin set and video images of snow-covered peaks were all the clues you needed, but if you had any doubt you were in for an après-ski extravaganza at D&G, the first look settled it: Natasha Poly came striding out, all legs in a red and white snowflake sweater bodysuit complete with rhinestone-covered goggles pushed up on her forehead and furry mukluks on her feet.

Theme cheerfully established, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana worked their way through all sorts of cheeky winter-vacationland motifs. In addition to those snowflake sweaters, there were all-in-ones, belted cardigans, and full-body ski suits in reindeer hand-knits. Charcoal gray cable sweaters, meanwhile, were cut into the duo's signature bustier dresses, and Dasher and Dancer pranced across sweet, floaty printed chiffon frocks or blouses layered under fitted vests. And there was a lot more fur where those boots came from—on cardigans, skirts, and even bloomer shorts. Who'd want to leave the lodge when you could lounge around in those all day?

Insiders will recall that the designers sent ski bunnies down their runway four years ago when the Winter Olympics were in Turin. That's practically ancient history in fashion time, and even if they do remember that the duo has visited this territory before, the line's young fans hardly care about that. What they want is fun, sexy fashion, and that's what Dolce and Gabbana are giving them by the sleigh-load this season.
—Nicole Phelps

Davidelfin

The Spanish model Eleonora Bose, who made her name in the early aughts modeling for a Tom Ford-run Gucci, opened the show sporting a cropped helmet of Crayola yellow hair. Bose's square-jawed, androgynous look was right in line with the spare silhouettes.

Words like "ecclesiastical" and "strict" are often applied to a Davidelfin collection, and adding to the mood of austerity this season was a black, white, and gray palette accented by pops of fuchsia and a shade that matched Bose's 'do. A lone print, taken from snakeskin, was a welcome relief from the monochrome.

As was the case with Spring (which featured pants hidden behind a skirt front, and a shirtdress disguised as a cardigan and top), designer David Delfin played with the reorganization of garments, literally cutting them apart and moving the leftovers to other pieces. What looked like part of a miniskirt attached to a pair of gray wool trousers was actually the end of a blazer, pockets and all, that had been chopped off at the waist and moved down. "If you see a cropped jacket," the designer said, "you will see the bottom of it appear somewhere else." Interesting concept, but the results were alternately severe or just odd.

Better was a sheath with a long blazer worn over the top; it was actually one piece that zipped up the back, with an overall slimming effect. A few flattering looks aside, there was an awkwardness to many of them (one model appeared positively hobbled by her coat-dress hybrid) that detracted from the strength of the tailoring.
—Alison Baenen

Dennis Basso

New York woke up to a coating of snow this morning, and while most could have done without sludge on their morning commute, Dennis Basso couldn't have been happier. "What better thing to happen to a furrier on the day of his show?" he exclaimed excitedly. "People will be thinking about getting warm!"

Basso offered his usual panoply of over-the-top options—a broadtail and fox capelet, for one; a chinchilla, fox, and feather jacket, for another. Getting warmer?

In recent seasons, the team has been working to perfect a unique mesh-netting technique. Pelts were backed by a silklike webbing on the aforementioned capelet, and it had an unusual lightness and buoyancy as a result. It's details like these that have won the designer such a loyal fan base. What Upper East Side doyenne wouldn't approve of a pair of raccoon and alligator "pockets" (fur-lined hand warmers attached to the ends of an alligator belt, to be strapped over her favorite top)? If that sounds decadent, it was, but you don't go to Basso for understatement. Even the pants, slim and made from ribbons of cashmere and stingray, were constructed to command a second look. Worn with a sheer black top with epaulets, they were clearly an attempt to woo a younger audience.

Generally, Basso has made progress in crossing the generational—if the not the uptown-downtown—divide. Still, that special spark that in collections past has made his furs feel quite modern was missing. The coats are so gorgeous, though, his core clientele probably won't care.
—Alison Baenen

Derek Lam

Following Spring's ode to East Coast beach towns, Derek Lam's Fall collection was a celebration of the American West. "Hasn't everybody at one point or another had the fantasy of being a cowboy? A cowgirl?" he asked backstage. Well, as grounded in reality as his chic clothes looked today, even gals who never dreamed of life on the range will find plenty of stuff to like.

Despite the fringe, the blanket embroideries, even the Albertus Swanepoel-designed cowboy hats, the mood remained decidedly urban. That's partly because Lam showed so many statement coats, a city woman's must-have if ever there was one. His customer can choose from streamlined caramel moleskin with black vintage-leather sleeves, a black and white knitted fox cardigan, or a sand-colored shearling bomber edged with dark-brown leather. The other factor that made this collection look so right was its strict, tailored silhouette. The charcoal silk gazar flaring trousers—shown with a shrunken marled wool sweater and a terra-cotta suede apron belt—are contenders for the pants of New York fashion week. As for the wooden platform boots he showed with them, we saw so many approving nods from the audience, it's certain there will be wagonloads of girls eager to rustle up a pair.

Another positive note: After a year's absence, two floor-length dresses made the runway, one in black crepe jersey with a plunging cowl neck and the other in draped ivory silk jersey. The recession may not officially be over, but Lam's clearly feeling optimistic. Nowadays, few things are as seductive as that.
—Nicole Phelps

Devi Kroell

Now in her fourth season of designing ready-to-wear, Devi Kroell graduated today to a full runway show. Though the designer displayed an immediately confident voice when launching her accessories business six years ago, the process of branching out into clothing hasn't been quite as effortless. Backstage, she explained that last Spring's collection, which was very different from today's opulent, evening-focused look, was the result of letting too many cooks into the proverbial kitchen. "I listened to too many people," said Kroell. Starting with her pre-fall line, the designer explained, she sharpened her focus to a raison d'être about which she feels strongly: translating the minimal shapes and rich materials of her bags and shoes into dresses and coats.

Fall had plenty of those luxurious materials, in moody jewel tones or flash-bright metallics. The show opened with a royal purple astrakhan tuxedo coat with a leather collar, topped with a fox fur trapper's hat. There were more pelts to come, like two terrific dyed fox coats, which were some of the strongest pieces in the show. (In fact, Kroell's furs, which debuted long before the ready-to-wear, have always seemed like a perfect natural extension of her business.) Whether you'd call these silhouettes minimal depends on your taste for tricks. There were blouson backs and face-framing collars, but nothing so outlandish as to ring the alarm.

Though not perfect, it was a collection with some fine clothes. Enough to justify expanding into very high-end ready-to-wear while the economy still falters? That remains to be seen. But with the cash injection of the Bartel family (which also owns a stake in Lanvin), Kroell may yet have the luxury of time and resources to make her case.
—Meenal Mistry

Diane von Furstenberg

"I always wanted to live a man's life in a woman's body." That quote, which appeared at the top of her show notes, is something Diane von Furstenberg has said before, so it's perhaps surprising that men's suiting is something she hasn't explored much in the past. Its appearance here today helped make for one of the designer's more satisfying shows in a while.

To start things off, von Furstenberg threw a bolero densely embroidered with chiffon rosettes over a heather gray felted wool double-breasted pantsuit with short, cuffed trousers. It was a novel concept that she repeated later with an ivory silk cord cardigan worn over a satin black tuxedo jacket and matching evening jumpsuit, though it's not as believable a look as, say, a corduroy jacket with leather elbow patches slipped on top of a ruffled chiffon minidress.

But it wasn't all about playing the hard against the soft. Frocks, the wrap dress in particular, are this designer's bread and butter, and there was no shortage of feminine frills here. Some of the more interesting offerings included a simple black shift with chain mail inset horizontally below the hips, a twenties-ish belted chiffon tunic dress worn over cropped pants, and a vibrant panne velvet number embellished with a giant glittering beetle, not unlike the dress von Furstenberg wore to take her bow. This was her right-hand man Nathan Jenden's last show; he's leaving to focus on his signature collection. No doubt they were both pleased to be ending their relationship on a positive note for their victory lap.
—Nicole Phelps

Diesel Black Gold

The gridlocked mass of people at the check-in desk hinted that things were business as usual at the Diesel Black Gold show, but the debut collection by its new creative director, Sophia Kokosalaki, was anything but. "I wanted to infuse technique into the clothes," she said backstage, "but still have them maintain that rock 'n' roll soul inherent to the brand." While past seasons have leaned heavily toward complicated, overly distressed garments, Kokosalaki's approach was much cleaner and more focused. There was black leather—skinny trousers, sexy little dresses, sleek moto jackets—paired mostly with faded denim shirts and vests. High-end touches could be found in the stitched-up seams and patchworked layers ("I approached the denim like it was yarn," the designer said). With the exception of a one-shouldered velvet jumpsuit that didn't quite mesh with the otherwise tomboyish offerings—even the sexy body-cons that closed the show had more swagger than sweetness—it was a solid effort that will ensure the brand stays on the radar of the many top editors and retailers who made it through the crush.
—Romney Leader

DKNY

As much as Donna Karan has an issue with fashion's seasonal system and off-kilter deliveries, she's definitely not one for the "seasonless" route some designers take. As much as last Spring's collection was clean and breezy, today's show spilled over with layers and layers of cold-weather-appropriate wares.

The overall look here was sixties schoolgirl. Nearly every skirt on these side-ponytailed lasses was mini and pleated, some in wool and others in a thick leather that pushed the vibe out of decades past (tasseled loafers, now transformed into aggressive platforms, did the same). Those kicky skirts were worn with long, oversize wool coats—a notch more outsize than the boyfriend blazer—little tailored jackets, or cardigans and turtlenecks. To finish off, there were long scarves, astrakhan newsboys, and ankle socks or woolen tights. The outerwear was especially strong. Highlights: a gray hooded toggle coat and boyfriend-tailored vest coats that kept the layering polished and cool.

Karan added a twist to the proceedings by going from grammar to art school, citing Bauhaus as the source for her color-blocked sweaters in moody autumn hues. As day turned to evening, those Mondrian-esque motifs were collaged in with various panels of beading. A couple overdid it, but they could be forgiven. Not worthy of mercy, however, was the splashy floral—a print not fit for news.
—Meenal Mistry

Dolce & Gabbana

When you strip away the facade and the fandango of fashion, what's left that matters? In many ways, those soul-searching questions are the subtext of the season, as the industry strives to re-anchor itself in fundamental values after a decade spent sucking up to celebrities and, increasingly, pumping out overpriced pseudo luxury made in China. In Milan, Dolce & Gabbana marshaled their response to the call for authenticity and a reconnection with every woman who's been a frustrated, alienated shopper over the past few years: Simply, yet movingly, they showed their classics, and how they make them.

In a video, Domenico Dolce was seen expertly running tailor's tacks into the lapel of a jacket in the studio—as he learned at the knee of his Sicilian tailor father—while Stefano Gabbana sketched, took measurements, and finished one of the curvaceous Italianate sex-bomb dresses the pair made their own 20 years ago. Alone, those scenes could have been self-aggrandizing, but the real kicker was the way the designers handed over the spotlight to the skilled, white-coated women and men in their ateliers who craft their product.

At the end, as at the Marc Jacobs show in New York, it had hard-bitten members of the audience running backstage with tears in their eyes. Dolce & Gabbana are facade maintainers and fandango-dancers with the best of them, but they hit a nerve in making the information in this show intimate and personal, as well as instantly available across the globe via live streaming. Perhaps the level of that exposure cuts out the need for too much explanation of the looks they put out. Aficionados will note the very new: the fact that quite a large proportion of the dresses and suits were knitted. But what really matters? That what Dolce & Gabbana does remains, immaculately, the same—and there's evidently still so much enjoyment and passion in the making of it.
—Sarah Mower

Donna Karan

Donna Karan's signature label is turning 25. That gave her the opportunity to do some looking back, though not in too obvious a way. Yes, the better part of her Fall lineup was black, not unlike her career-making Seven Easy Pieces collection. And, sure, there were plenty of stretchy leotards and tights. But Karan made sure this wasn't a greatest-hits moment. Instead, she rather brilliantly picked up the twin preoccupations of her last two collections, namely sculpted tailoring and draped dresses. What's new—and spot-on for the season so far—is the designer's focus on dense, nubby texture.

Working a somewhat fuller, away-from-the-body silhouette than she has of late, she showed cocoon coats with sculptural shawl collars and short bubble skirts in tactile wool and double organza. Sack coats came in printed lynx fur, black-and-white tweed seamed in contrast satin, or laminated wool that had been treated to evoke a rain-soaked New York pavement. For a city weekend, there was a yummy, heavy-gauge cashmere-wool cardigan. But the most compelling texture, not to mention the one requiring the most technical savvy, was a shearling laser-cut to resemble lace.

On the soft side of the equation, Karan draped electric blue washed duchesse satin into a short, strapless bubble dress. The real stunners, though, had a more body-loving cling. Her front-row power triumvirate of Susan Sarandon, Demi Moore, and Brooke Shields, who chatted and giggled throughout the show, seemed to perk up at the sight of floor-scrapers rendered in stretch hammered satin with a plunging cowl neckline or silk/wool mikado with an asymmetrical tucked bodice. Something to wear to the Oscars, perhaps?
—Nicole Phelps

Doo.Ri

Doo-Ri Chung's show started off with a navy suit featuring a bold-shouldered jacket whose hem was draped in black netting. A shirtdress, its regimental precision softened by swagged sashes below the waist, came next. So far, so strong. Chung's twin skills are tailoring and draping, and she put them to good use later on with, respectively, a lapis blue double-breasted coat and a sleeveless dress that, knotted and gathered at the hips, managed to make suede look sexy. The collection also had some sharp-looking cropped jackets and military pants, and an interesting textured silk strapless dress that looked like leather from the front row. But slinky jersey minidresses densely embroidered with orange, turquoise, and violet sequins at the sides didn't quite have the taste level you'd expect of Chung, and it was hard to connect the dots between them and other evening looks, like the spare sleeveless tops and long narrow skirts in gray and tan that closed the show. Overall, the collection seemed to lack focus, and it was sometimes difficult to engage with what was on the runway.
—Nicole Phelps

Douglas Hannant

Taken with the decor at the eighties-themed Halloween bash his friend Allison Sarofim held at her West Village town house last October, Douglas Hannant started to think graffiti for Fall. A few days later the deal was sealed after a visit to a Lower East Side warehouse to check out Basquiat-inspired works by the young French painter Nicolas Pol, in a show curated by Vladimir Restoin-Roitfeld.

Hold on a sec. The eighties at Douglas Hannant? Graffiti? Vladimir Restoin-Roitfeld?

Hannant knows it's a hard sell. "Based on my past work, I don't think anyone would expect me to do graffiti art," he said. "I'm bringing Alphabet City in the eighties to Park Avenue." And so he did. Panels of tag-covered plywood borrowed from Sarofim hung above the stage at the Kaye Playhouse, his Upper East Side venue. More spray-paint effects could less obviously be spied on the clothes. What looked like gold-and-green plaid on a cozy mohair cocoon coat with fox trim was actually a pattern in paint. The graffiti gambit worked, adding energy to otherwise rather conventional separates.

Weaving added another graphic touch. A short, banded dress comprised of strips of velvet and tweed was uptown-sexy; a knee-length version would appeal to Hannant's regular clientele—who might want to cherry-pick the collection judiciously. Several looks were overworked with laminated wool, a Wild Style array of colors, or peacock feathers. Still, the column dress that closed the show, covered in hand-painted sequins à la Basquiat, is sure to be in high demand for the next Museum Mile gala.
—Alison Baenen

Dries Van Noten

Freud's great unanswered question, "What does a woman want?" seems to be hanging over this round of collections, and it's already turned up some funny, off-beam stabbings around in the dark. Funny, that is, because isn't it obvious? What we want is a casual way of dressing that's also formal enough, new yet not ridiculously gimmicky, confident yet not egregiously aggressive, traditional in a comfortable way, yet also fresh in such a manner that we feel compelled to buy it. Well, let's hand it to Dries Van Noten for coming up with a personal squaring of all those apparently oh-so-difficult contradictions.

His collection was a serene piecing-together of classic menswear tailoring, washed-out military fabric, fifties and sixties ladylike shapes, and sweatshirting. The success was that he integrated all those elements in such simple, wearable ways that didn't scream "fashion." In almost every silhouette, there was a juxtaposition of something grand with something street. Jackets would have a tailored body with army-drill sleeves; a gray sweatshirt-material top would be worn over a rich brocade dirndl; a full-skirted shirtwaister would come in blue military fabric with a small turn-down collar unexpectedly embroidered with silver Indian thread. For evening, the most compelling look was the offhand shrugging on of a sloppy khaki knit over a long, slim magenta printed skirt dragging a small, romantic train.

The way the show reshuffled wardrobe elements most women might own was an inspiration—demonstrating how a casual trench would look great with a crocodile tote; ditto a fitted fifties cloque dress with a drab canvas doctor's bag, or a camel blazer with casual jodhpur-ish pants. Part of the impact is that Van Noten has found a way of presenting all this in a sustained and measured way on a long, long runway, which (no matter that this one was in the Baroque, gilded, chandeliered, and frescoed splendor of the Paris civic hall) ends up conveying the sense of women walking a city street. With their no-fuss hair and glamorous sunglasses, the models left the kind of believable, attainable impression that makes fashion look as if it's something we can all relax about for a change.
—Sarah Mower

Dsquared²

With all-American sportswear making news on the runways, this could've been a big moment for Dan and Dean Caten of Dsquared², who built their label by putting a sexy, contemporary spin on preppy classics. Disappointingly, they went all-out vamp instead. To start, two models strode out with slicked-back hair, makeup straight out of a Helmut Newton shoot, and pointy manicures. In their little black cocktail dresses and matching red latex leggings, they could've been twins. There followed clingy leather motorcycle jackets and skirts, a bustier with padded hips dripping in shredded metallic fringe, and a biker jacket stitched all over with red and black feathers. Subtle it wasn't.

On the stage behind the runway, a pair of he-men in metallic jock straps and bandages stood beside their storage tubes. In keeping with the laboratory-like setup and its Frankenstein implications, the back of a black jersey gown was embroidered with a sparkly ribcage, and skeletal silver hands gripped the shoulders of a leather hourglass dress. Somewhat less obvious was a pair of net bodysuits with red and blue beading that represented arteries and veins. But there was nothing understated about the models' footwear: leather platform pumps and boots with curving spinal-cord heels.

The Caten brothers were probably aiming for a kinky bit of fun, but icky is more like it. No doubt, there's still a customer for the sexual come-ons that they sent down the catwalk, but the collection as a whole felt out of step.
—Nicole Phelps

Duro Olowu

Duro Olowu has a funny tale about how inspiration hit him for Fall: "I was walking around the gardens of Hidcote Manor, listening to dub on my iPod." Hidcote, for anyone who may not have a guide to British National Trust houses to hand, is an Arts & Crafts stately home in the Cotswolds with a gardenful of topiary, gazebos, and English flora. The dub part? Well, maybe it's traceable in this collection's slightly surreal color palette and take on English-lady eccentricity.

In any case, no matter: The substantive shift here is in the tailored, geometrically patterned knitwear Olowu has added to his familiar repertoire of softly patchworked dresses. There's something of the seventies about it: A-line skirts; reversible shifts; supple, unlined, neatly fitted cardigan jackets; plus capes and slouchy coats. Elsewhere, the designer turned his attention to coating fabric, even to swing skirts made of heavy, lined camel melton wool. It will take a brave, tiny-hipped girl to carry those off with aplomb, but the rest of the collection is a typical Olowu potpourri of items that his collector-followers will happily adopt.
—Sarah Mower

Elie Saab

Elie Saab scored some major red-carpet coups at the Oscars on Sunday, putting nominee Anna Kendrick in a blush pink gown and Rachel McAdams in a pastel floral number—both dresses from his January couture collection and both unapologetically pretty. For Fall, he took a much darker view, focusing primarily on black, with hits of burgundy, teal, and midnight blue for evening. His message would've been more powerful and effective had he edited down the 60-look show and eliminated the clingy tree-motif jerseys, but his sleek hourglass sheaths and flirty, full-skirted pieced lace cocktail dresses will appeal to more than just Hollywood starlets.

Zeroing in on real-world clothes rather than his usual event-dress-heavy lineup was a prescient move in a season when designers en masse have been rediscovering the power of plain. You couldn't call all of his eveningwear restrained, though: There were some see-through ombré net and peekaboo lace styles that, as any celebrity stylist could tell you, will never fly with the fashion police. But when Saab tamped down the excess in favor of understated goddess gowns and just-revealing-enough jewel-tone sequined columns, it was easy to picture the results on a red carpet sometime soon.
—Nicole Phelps

Elie Tahari

"My inspiration was a woman traveling the world in style," Elie Tahari said today, "like Marlene Dietrich in Shanghai Express."

The Israeli-born designer has built a sizable global brand with his polished, just-trendy-enough separates that work equally well in Dallas or Dubai. Fall's offerings fell nicely in step with his well-established strategy. Business-class customers will be drawn to the black wool military coat, the high-waisted trousers, and an elegant pantsuit with a belted safari jacket. For days off, Tahari turned out a few fur jackets (a trend we've been seeing throughout the week), silk peg-leg pants, and chunky cardigans. Voyager theme notwithstanding, Tahari's not a designer to travel too far off the beaten path, but the retail higher-ups on hand this morning aren't going to complain about that.
—Romney Leader

Elise Øverland

The fierce urban warrior of seasons past may be giving way to cozy layers and a more relaxed vibe on other Fall 2010 runways, but Elise Øverland isn't abandoning her signature rocker-chic aesthetic. "I just stand in front of my closet and decide what I want to wear in order to feel modern," the designer shrugged, speaking to Style.com in her studio two days before her show. For Fall, Øverland's feeling velvet, in particular a menswear-inspired suit with echoes of Mick Jagger and a tuxedo-style wrap dress with strong shoulders. Leather—of course—is also on her radar, turning up most notably in a black suit comprising a boxy moto jacket and slim pencil skirt, as well as a striking tonal red ensemble featuring a cropped jacket and form-fitting suede dress. "I didn't do as much leather this season, because it's hard to wear every day," Øverland explained. Maybe for the average person, but we're willing to bet the gaggle of art-world beauties cheering on the designer's stick-to-her-guns collection can pull it off.
—Romney Leader

Emanuel Ungaro

All week, the Twitterverse has been asking, what's Lindsay Lohan doing at Dior? At Viktor & Rolf? At John Galliano? Shouldn't she be putting the final touches on her second Emanuel Ungaro outing? Today, before the show, the house gave us all an answer: Sorry, paparazzi, but the omnipresent starlet actually had nothing to do with the Fall collection.

Estrella Archs took her bow solo, but just because Lohan and the heart-shaped spangled pasties that got so much attention last season are out of the picture doesn't mean that the pressure is off. On the whole, the collection of draped and ruched party dresses, scattered here and there with tailored jackets in menswear fabrics, was an improvement, if not necessarily made with the same joie de vivre or finesse as Ungaro's originals. But with the eighties moment fast disappearing in fashion's rearview mirror, Archs has new challenges ahead of her should she remain at the label. Now that everyone's talking about minimalism again, the first order of business will be finding a way to make the house codes relevant again. As difficult as it's no doubt been for Archs at Ungaro, it's not yet clear that she has skills adequate to the task.
—Nicole Phelps

Emilio Pucci

High bohemia and opium-smoking dens. Peter Dundas has taken Pucci to a darker, more dangerous place in his third season at the label, and it looks fabulous. "I wanted to do something that felt lush," he said. Indeed. From start to finish, the collection played like a sexy antidote to fashion's resurgent minimalism. You could almost hear the sigh of relief from the fearless red-carpet types and party girls for whom the less-is-less trend holds zero allure.

To open, Dundas showed a long jersey dress in an archival house print called Capri, only he had dip-dyed it deep purple and made the back scandalously low. Fringed scarf dresses, along with a feather chubby in acid green, added to the glam-hippie seventies vibe. Just plain glam, meanwhile, were the leggy minidresses—in black, say, with a peekaboo gold lace panel on the front—or the gowns with plunging necklines and high-drama slits and trailing hems.

None of that is exactly uncharted territory for Dundas, who's recently been discovered by the Kate Hudsons and Fergies of the world. What felt new was his tailoring. He cut jackets with strong, clean lines: They came elongated and double-breasted or cropped bolero-short, and were worn with scarves wrapped around the neck and knockout high-waisted suede flares. The woman who dons the bloodred matte crocodile aviator jacket and matching suede pants won't soon be forgotten. The celebrity stylists will be clamoring already.
—Nicole Phelps

Emporio Armani

Uptown Girl was the show's title, and Giorgio Armani wasn't about to resist the irrevocable eighties-ness of the idea. But, given Emporio's more mass-tige leanings, he took an interesting tack. In what could have been a nod to Emanuel Ungaro in his heyday, thigh-high ruched chiffon skirts matched jackets with a definite squared shoulder, and there were floaty draped tops, every so often gathered into a flower of fabric. The pleated cropped pants also recalled a particular moment in the passage of haute couture during the eighties.

Aside from one faded floral, Armani used his signature muted greige/oyster/nude palette, which was a modernizing touch. But he definitely ramped up the glam factor, from the fur jackets that were shown in a range of treatments to the Lurex checkerboard jackets and the closing sequence of pieces lathered with large black paillettes. Even when Armani showed a gray pinstripe suit, the skirt was swagged to the side—and super-short. Reality writ large has been a theme in Milan this season, so it makes sense that Giorgio the über-realist should be one of its prime exponents.
—Tim Blanks

Erdem

Erdem Moralioglu's twin sister, Sara, makes TV documentaries about geography and natural history. He's been looking at her films, watching the survival movie Alive, and thinking, he said, "about Picnic at Hanging Rock: girls surviving on the mountain. Elegantly, sort of." Moralioglu quotes these sorts of sources with a wry smile, in the full knowledge that they're pure fashion whimsy. In practical terms, what it meant was he'd come up with an autumnal palette of brown, ocher, teal, rust, and tan for his prints and coats, and a gray as dirty as a leaden November sky for a lace dress.

The thing about being a designer of pretty dresses is that it takes something a little odd to keep it young and just left of conventional. Sometimes, with Erdem, it's an overload of sweetness, embroidery, and froth that does it. In this case, it was the color, slightly off and more somber than usual. Though most of the shapes—Moralioglu's familiar short, stiffly belled skirts and high-necked long gowns—stayed the same, the effects worked well here and there. A cloudy gray tulle dress with bird appliqués and a yellow silk number, its puffed sleeves vertically patterned with autumn leaves, had the kind of slightly weird aura that would turn heads at a cocktail party; and all the long finale dresses had Moralioglu's signature delicate romance about them. Otherwise, with an eye to the fact that this was an outdoorsy collection, he added a few coats to keep his girls warm in the woods. A neat camel trench with a shearling-lined hood had members of the audience planning personal orders as they struggled out into the rain-swept London streets.
—Sarah Mower

Erin Fetherston

"My muse this season is Nico," Erin Fetherston explained a few days before her show. "And she always wore pantsuits." Does this mean the self-confessed "dress obsessed," fantasy-driven designer is exploring new territories this season? Well, yes and no. She continued, "I wondered, if she did wear dresses, what would they look like?"

Fetherston infused her latest collection with a bohemian, seventies rock 'n' roll spirit—more realistic inspiration than the deer and Nutcracker themes she's looked to in the past. Pleated chiffon maxi dresses replaced Spring's shorter hems. Groovy purple velvet blazers, fitted vests, and flared trousers proved Fetherston is pretty adept at tailoring, too. Still, the designer couldn't resist tossing in some of her signature silhouettes (a little strapless coral silk frock with dévoré bustier, for example). They didn't quite vibe with the soundtrack of "All Tomorrow's Parties," but her overall message was clear. "I could make party dresses forever, but it's good to push yourself to try new things," she said. Even the biggest dreamers need to return to reality sometimes.
—Romney Leader

Erin Wasson x RVCA

Jared Leto was there, so was Ke$ha. And the celebs were just part of the story. Erin Wasson can draw a crowd of editors and retailers that would make full-time designers cringe with envy. The attraction? The moonlighting model's fearless sense of personal style, first and foremost, although the show's novel setting—the pillow- and rug-strewn sixth floor of ABC Carpet & Home—and a live performance by the Brooklyn band Yeasayer also served to lure in a high-profile audience. The danger of this approach is that it can set the bar too high for a label that's only in its fourth season, and it's probably not surprising if this time around the payoff didn't live up to the setup.

There were shades of the seventies in a trio of glam-rock ivory fur jackets. Other looks—like the long tank dresses layered over turtlenecks, and slouchy tees paired with drop-crotch thermal leggings—gave you a bit of the nineties grunge vibe that's quickly become an early New York thing. Wasson's got some sense for the way the fashion winds are blowing, but the 22-look lineup was a little too long on T-shirts and corduroy cutoffs, and an ill-fitting jumpsuit should have been edited out. A fully fledged show comes with its own expectations, and Wasson and her team will have to figure out the best way to fill the bigger stage next time.
—Nicole Phelps

Etro

Straitened economic conditions, packed schedules, and the super-quick absorption of fashion on the Internet being as they are, it was quaint—not to say, verging on bizarre—to turn up to a midday show, only to find a drinks-and-nibbles reception in full swing, followed by a collection that trailed on so long, a quarter of the audience got up and headed out in desperation before the models left the runway. Not to be rude to the content of Etro, whose eclectic-ethnic aesthetic has an immense amount of goodwill on its side (it's a kind of Italian answer to Dries Van Noten), but this isn't the way fashion is conducted anywhere else these days.

That said, this was possibly the collection in which Veronica Etro had taken the house heritage in paisley and chinoiserie fabrics and most successfully integrated them into fashion. The paisley motifs were separated out and flatteringly placed in clusters riding on the flanks of pencil skirts or in the bodice of high-waisted dresses. This wasn't one of Etro's hippie-deluxe seasons, where everything flows in breezy gypsy fashion, but one where the richness of travelers' trophies was distilled, imagined as the possessions of Peggy Guggenheim or Diana Vreeland. That gave the cue for some great jewelry, including Cleopatra-like neckpieces, worn on sweaters with chic navy caban coats and cropped pants. Other elements were chinoiserie-quilted jackets, cheongsam blouses, and kimono gowns, but by the time the last few were exiting the runway, the audience had lost the plot and was flooding out.
—Sarah Mower

Fashion East

It's a measure of how inclusive London fashion week has become that the fashion council's HQ, Somerset House, has found space for Fashion East. The exact location was its vaults, fitting for what was formerly an underground group show. Georgian coal holes and dripping pipes notwithstanding, the convenience of merely tottering down a couple flights of algae-lined steps for a frisson of edge—rather than spending 45 minutes in traffic and 20 in a seething crowd, as was the case previously—can't be argued with.

The thing is, though, that London isn't so edgy anymore. The renegade, aggressive atmosphere that spawned Alexander McQueen is a thing of the past. These days the city is better at producing preternaturally honed specialists, a fact reflected in this season's lineup, which includes a milliner, Nasir Mazhar; a sportswear designer, Heikki Salonen; and Michael Van Der Ham. The last's collaged eveningwear is already virtually sold out at Liberty, which took a risk on him in his first season.

Of the three, Mazhar, who came to making headgear via hairdressing, is the raw newcomer—though through his association with the stylist Nicola Formichetti, he's already a favorite of Lady Gaga and Madonna. The hair-to-hat connection was easy enough to read in his opening updo of scrolled black leather "curlers" and the falls of pink nylon wig that cascaded from the back of a Tudor wimple. Some of his influences—the Rude Boys and Rude Girls he quoted in his program notes—come from his daily observations of living and working in the multicultural East End. But Mazhar is developing an artistic flair for a distinctive geometric structure (as in the peaks of his mean leather men's caps, set back on the head), and that could one day turn into a brand proposition for a smart streetwear company.

Both Salonen and Van Der Ham, on the other hand, are Northern Europeans who have set up businesses in London after gaining master's degrees at the Royal College of Art and Central Saint Martins, respectively. Salonen, a Finn, continued his straight-up-and-down tomboyish silhouette, steering it into slightly darker territory with tailored suede shifts and a great pair of black jeans appliquéd with raw-edge triangles.

The Dutchman Van Der Ham was the one under the most pressure to perform. He responded by continuing in the same vein as last season, collaging fabrics into dresses and separates—with the addition, this time, of rosebud-scattered Liberty prints donated by the store. True, he steered his collection more in the way of day-appropriate pieces and made a cautious step into patchworked knitwear, which potentially opens up a new product category for him. Still, it's the same look, and it left some questions hanging. Is the essential charm of his work the amateurism of the handmade product? Would it look better if it was made to purist standards of dressmaking skills? And is he sailing too close at times to territory Nicolas Ghesquière marked out years back? Van Der Ham's final dress—a lovely hybrid of long, flowing navy silk and crystal-encrusted beige wool—was outstanding enough to erase such worries for a second. But when the time comes for him to leave the Fashion East nest next season, he's going to find himself needing to face these issues head-on.
—Sarah Mower

Fendi

To describe Fendi as verging on reserved and sober when there was a white lynx coat right there in the middle might seem fashion-delusional, but even the Roman home of superdeluxe furs has indeed caught the season's mood of restraint. In this winter, when all leading designers are concerned with calming and reshaping the silhouette, Karl Lagerfeld seemed less interested in showcasing the furriers' storied technical fireworks than pulling back to work on swing coats; soft, billowy blouses; mid-calf dirndls; and a slightly countrified, muted palette of gray, navy, beige, and mustard. Even the footwear was a play on the sensible and utilitarian. Not teetering statement platforms but high-heeled booties detailed with ribbed rubber toe caps and top lacing akin to Wellingtons or the muckers that horsey girls wear in the stable yard.

It's all relative, of course. Backstage, and close up on the racks, there was more state-of-the-art fur expertise in evidence beyond the patchworked coats and vests (and that exceptional lynx) visible on the runway. The passage in what could pass as camel hair was actually shaved beige fur. The velvety nap of the eveningwear was constructed from ribbon strips of organza and fur, too. Still, from the point of view of the current drive toward chic practicality, it was the least showy coats—the simple, narrow, collarless suede cardigans with shearling on the inside—that could turn out to have the greatest fashion appeal in reality. Which is what it's all about now.
—Sarah Mower

Francesco Scognamiglio

The startlingly weird gold mask that Philip Treacy made for last season's Francesco Scognamiglio show had been replaced by less out-there accent pieces: crystal-encrusted belt buckles in the Boucheron style. Had the designer decided to play it demure and safe? Not exactly. Having recently landed some U.S. accounts, Scognamiglio put a few items on his runway with commercial potential, like a tweedy coat-dress; a black tailleur with the blazer tucked into high-waisted trousers; and strong, on-trend shearling aviator jackets. But there were still plenty of avant-garde goings-on in his well-executed Fall collection.

Inspired by the structure of early Azzedine Alaïa, Scognamiglio turned out a series of flared-skirt tank dresses with bold cutouts on the torso. His other point of reference, believe or not, was the fish, which as his show notes explained is a symbol of power, prosperity, and positivity. The sea creatures turned up as sculpted wedge heels on his shoes and as one enormous belt; they also informed the pleated, scalelike texture of a black coat-dress and a mint green blouse, both of which had high, pyramidlike collars that echoed streamlined, aquatic shapes.

Backstage, Scognamiglio noted that his brand is ten years old. That's a long time to operate on the fringes of the Milan fashion world, but for the moment he seems content to remain there.
—Nicole Phelps

Gabriele Colangelo

Gabriele Colangelo's first passion is fabric. For Fall, he got interested in the idea of erosion and rocks, which gave him the basis for a coolly elegant color palette of grays, beiges, and icy whites and provided a starting point for his deeply tactile materials. Among them: the richly textured, fissured wool he used for the opening leather-belted wrap coat; the chiffon trapped between double layers of organza that became a softly draped shift; and the charcoal flannel he twisted and tucked to evoke swirls of marble on an otherwise simple dress.

His sheared astrakhans and minks intrigued, too—you can chalk that up to the family furrier business. Thanks to new techniques, the details of which he wasn't divulging, Colangelo's vests, coats, and even skirts require no lining—call it double-face fur. No doubt his background helped him come up with the crinkly lightweight leather he cut into a streamlined collarless coat. In a Milan season of great outerwear, it was right up there. In all: another promising outing from this up-and-comer.
—Nicole Phelps

Gap

Gap's Patrick Robinson is planning to do for work pants what he did for the brand's premium denim business last year: i.e., make them relevant to the company's target 25-to-35-year-old demographic via on-trend cuts; sophisticated, exclusive-to-Gap fabrics; and a $59.50 price point that he hopes will have customers going back for seconds or maybe more. "It's about dressing people for seven days a week, not just the weekend," said the designer.

Showing off the seven new women's fits at an informal presentation of the brand's Fall collection this afternoon, Robinson paired a cropped black tuxedo pant with a softly ruffled white sleeveless blouse; hip-slung, dropped-crotch boy trousers with a relaxed button-down; and a narrow boot-cut style with a shawl-collar shearling (at $795, the latter will be the most expensive thing in the store). Among the highlights was a pair of slightly flared, tailored "perfect trousers" teamed with a classic peacoat—the outfit nailed the "wear it today, wear it years from now" vibe that was the big message at the Fall shows. As for the Pierre Hardy for Gap peep-toe, lace-up wedge booties, they look like another waiting list in the making, and the label's own stacked-heel platform oxfords and boots will have plenty of eager admirers, too.
—Nicole Phelps

Gareth Pugh

Gareth Pugh's emblematic chevron is also one of the symbols of Art Deco, and the glamour of the Deco years in Hollywood was one of the sub-currents in the designer's latest collection. That meant he continued to move away from the hard alien edge that was once his signature in favor of a more sinuous line. Karlie Kloss in an obi-belted cashmere wool coat with matching flared pants? Nouvelle Dietrich! Likewise the full-length fishtailed gown in chevrons of chiffon and leather, with a capelet draped over the shoulders. Twenty-first-century Adrian!

Pugh led with suits of solid-looking neoprene-backed leathers. He said he wanted his women to look strong, but they looked stiff in light of what was to come. He went up a gear with a coat-dress and pants in a samurailike glazed basket weave, a glamorous cape coat with frayed edges, and an asymmetrical crocheted coat over leggings. They had the drama that the designer's fans expect, but they were an evolution of the softer, more romantic mood he initiated for Spring. His key silhouette—an A-line cut on the square, falling away to points, with a natural shoulder—was all about movement. He emphasized that further with a group of pieces draped in fine chains, which slithered like flapper dresses. Pugh accessorized the collection with men in outfits that were designed to emphasize masculine vulnerability in the face of feminine strength. Hence, pleated palazzo pants for the guy in your life.
—Tim Blanks

Gary Graham

"I love things that look like they were once something else," Gary Graham said a few days before his show. And so Fall had a well-worn and repurposed look; even the shoes, cloven-hoof heels (designed to give the models maximum height during a stage-less presentation), were assembled from bits of flotsam and jetsam lying about in the studio.

The needlepoint tapestry on one sharp Victorian-ish coat looked like a remnant of an old couch—a good thing. Even better was a beat-up and cropped leather cape with a surprisingly sweet, soft shape, worn over a silk jersey top and a miniskirt. In addition to repurposing, Graham likes multipurposing: What was termed a "skirt top" in the liner notes turned out to be a flimsy georgette piece that could be worn as a dress, a shirt, or a skirt. Many of the looks were expertly layered with skirts and dresses peeking out below alpaca Indian cloth cardigans or boiled-wool coats. Amid all the harder fabrics and the raw tailoring, a beaded black tulle dress struck a poignant note of delicacy.
—Alison Baenen

Generra

After a two-season hiatus, critical darlings Swaim and Christina Hutson returned tonight to the runway. The husband-wife team, whose much-adored label Obedient Sons and Daughters was forced to close its doors in early 2009, have resurfaced as the creative directors at Generra.

"I only knew Hypercolor from back in the day," Christina said backstage before the show, referring to Generra's heat-sensitive T-shirt line, while Swaim remembered a slightly earlier moment when the brand offered a more extensive casual wardrobe. Together they settled on creating a modern version of this bright and youthful early-nineties-era notion of Generra in their rebooting. But perhaps all you really needed to figure that out was to pick up the branded electric glow stick on your chair.

The look here was indeed young and colorful, with an array of peppy-hued knits, rah-rah skirts, and full-skirted minidresses. A trippy blurred print was apparently inspired by the happy tones of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The arch girlishness was cut slightly by a smattering of oversize anoraks, cargo trousers, and a speckled wool coat. It was such a far cry from anything we've ever seen this pair produce that you wondered if they had perhaps overshot in their new direction. The Hutsons and their new label might benefit from a slight return to what brought the designers their initial success. At any rate, the last look was a fully matched, printed suit ensemble of jacket, Henley top, and slim pants. Guess they couldn't resist injecting a little Obedience.
—Meenal Mistry

Giambattista Valli

Question: If all the camel coats in all the Fall collections were laid end to end, how many people would be able to tell them apart? Giambattista Valli added one of his own to the long line of beige show-openers: a cocoon-ish shape balanced on kitten-heel slingbacks. The shoes were a key to the slightly sixties theme he was working. It's another trend of the season, of course, but it's also a decade this designer frequently uses as a starting point for his unashamedly feminine, slightly frothy approach—which was soon to break out in tufted 3-D ribbon embroideries, variously deployed on shifts and gowns.

Whatever Valli does—cute day suits, short cocktail, or over-the-top statement gowns—it has the knack of charming the wealthy, social customers who are his loyal friends. The Valli girls, including Brooke Shields, Coco Brandolini, Dr. Lisa Airan, and Andrea Dellal's shoe-designer daughter, Charlotte, were there in force this time to show solidarity with the designer, as well as to shop. Like several other Italian labels recently, Valli's has caught the fallout from the financial catastrophes that have been sinking fashion conglomerates in his home country. Mariella Burani Fashion Group, which manufactures his collections, went bankrupt last month and is being liquidated. An announcement released just before the show stated he is taking production into his own hands.

Valli's fans will find a lot to like among his Fall offerings, which eschewed plainness and sobriety for mostly short, swingy dresses with elaborate surfaces and sheer panels (perhaps the through-views to the panties will somehow be obscured in reality). Some of the tuxedo looks over wisps of chiffon—an homage to the Saint Laurent retrospective about to open in Paris—might well (again, with the underwear issues sorted out) appeal to the brigade of chic mothers Valli also serves. Considering the crisis conditions under which this collection was designed, it was a respectable show from one of fashion's more resolutely optimistic survivors. Could the fact that there was an oligarch in the front row be a sign of hope? Alexander Lebedev, a former KGB agent who is a British newspaper proprietor, was scanning the show with his son Evgeny, a sponsor of the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund.
—Sarah Mower

Gianfranco Ferré

Tommaso Aquilano and Roberto Rimondi got the Fall memo about simplifying and streamlining. With the Bauhaus movement and samurai costumes for inspiration, their latest collection had a more understated sensibility than their previous efforts, a welcome development.

In the past this duo has tended to favor heavy embroideries and overly complicated constructions, but today's embellishments were mostly of a subtler variety: A precisely cut gray tweed suit came with a leather panel down the front of both the jacket and the skirt, while a gorgeous camel alpaca coat had sharp, contrasting lapels.

Of course, this wouldn't be the house of Ferré without flourishes. The designers called their new look "decorated minimalism," and it was a fitting description for a sleek long-sleeved, zip-front dress with woven leather insets or a caramel chiffon strapless number with delicate geometric pintucking. Come evening, a nude jersey gown with a shiny harness was less well judged. But some of the long dresses, which were spliced with curving panels of sequins or a glinting flash of gold patent leather, demonstrated the designers' new, lighter touch.
—Nicole Phelps

Giles

Something of the sixties keeps bobbing up on the runways this season. It was there at Prada and Rochas, and now—not entirely surprisingly, since it's often the designer's beat—at Giles, giant beehives and all. This time, Giles Deacon found his way into it by looking at the work of the contemporary Dutch photographer Erwin Olaf. The designer said he was aiming to catch the spirit of "slightly disconsolate girls who might be from the sixties—or somewhere in the future. Or maybe on a starship."

If it didn't count as one of the season's more rigorous work-throughs of sci-fi and sixties themes, it gave Deacon the excuse to crush some of Fall's trends together: a palette of browns and orange, A-line skirts, cropped versions of winter's new flares, metallic brocade gathered short skirts, and a shearling jacket. The last had a big collar styled (if you looked at it one way) like an Apollo-mission space suit. Toy-shaped handbags—a gonk and a gremlin—made for Deacon by Katie Hillier, and funny metal "cloud" headdresses by Stephen Jones gave a spoofy cartoonish spin. Still, there's a sense that Deacon is having a harder time attracting attention among the Paris competition than in his native London. This season, to get the slot he wanted, he went off-schedule, causing a certain amount of disruption to the first night of the Paris shows.
—Sarah Mower

Giorgio Armani

The audience walked into Giorgio Armani's latest presentation down an avenue lined with the works of Richard Hambleton, whose graffiti-graphic black "Shadowman" paintings from the early eighties are looking mighty good of late. Armani took that black and ran with it, all the way through a show whose guts were darkest velvet. He talked about "the New Chic," but what that boiled down to was a very particular precision: a short wrapped skirt, a jacket with a broad shoulder—sometimes peaked—and seaming that evoked Joan Crawford's exaggerated tailoring from the forties. And most of it in that black velvet. The two gowns in you-guessed-it that closed the show were surprisingly funereal as a red-carpet statement, but otherwise, almost everything slotted effortlessly into the category retailers then and boozehounds now think of as after-five. Examples included the one-shouldered dress floating away asymmetrically on one side, or the jacket coated in black paillettes (an echo of the Emporio collection earlier this week). Given that the mood was predominantly black, it made sense that the standout pieces were in color: a coat-dress in vibrant red ponyskin, an orange mohair jacket, a funnel-necked coat in green velvet. Armani has often seemed most attached to the exceptions to his own rules. It's perfectly conceivable that we saw something like that today. The needle-heeled stilettos and the fringed berets that suggested a sea creature dropped from a great height onto the models' heads certainly said so.
—Tim Blanks

Givenchy

"I was thinking of the ski world, and the scuba world," said Riccardo Tisci. "And the colors of the Bauhaus." True, his collection incorporated snowflake-patterned knits; neoprene diving fabric; and black, red, and beige as a color code. But the way he melded those materials into his collection spoke more of this Fall's reworking of the aesthetics of the nineties, personalized with Tisci's taste for high-drama Parisian glamour. Sporty piste- cum surfwear this definitely was not.

A better way of looking at it was as one of the season's rechannelings of the work of Helmut Lang and Martin Margiela, two towering heroes of modern fashion design whose retirement from the scene has left a gaping hole in women's wardrobes. Tisci's tailoring, like Phoebe Philo's at Celine, is a way of filling that gap with sharp camel coats, tuxedo suits, and lean black pants. In Tisci's case, it's also accompanied by tape-bound throats; red glitter gloves, bags, and lips; and sexy workings of scarlet, black, and nude lace. That's all fully in line with his own gothic taste but also reminiscent of Margiela's styling, back in the long-lost day when "edgy" was the buzzword of the nineties.

The scuba-ski dynamic meant traditional alpine patterns reengineered into formfitting bodysuits, sunk into neoprene lower garments that unfurled at the waist by means of zippers (the look happens to cross-reference with a section of Nicolas Ghesquière's collection this Fall). For evening, the fold-down device was transposed to inform the shape of black velvet and satin evening shifts and tunics. To end with, Tisci returned to working with feathers—a feature he's made his own in his couture collections over several seasons. Last in the line: a puff of white ostrich on an organza T-shirt, paired with narrow black pants, poetically trailing a pair of diaphanous "wings" as it exited. It was quite beautiful—and then again, in spirit, inescapably Helmut Lang.
—Sarah Mower

Graeme Armour

Scottish newcomer Graeme Armour shared his Valentine's Day time slot at Milk Studios with three other labels. If he was the least well-known, he won't be for long. The Central Saint Martins grad, who worked closely with Alexander McQueen for three years, has a clever eye for cut. He demonstrated that here by slicing wool or leather into edgy jumpsuits that reveal almost as much as they conceal. He's also got a showman's sensibility for artful details. How about those pewter leather pants with their tiered ruffles? Or the crocheted black leather tank and bomber that were less flashy, yet displayed an equally impressive level of workmanship? Pieces like those will tempt the big-name stylists who turned up, but let's hope Armour keeps experimenting with more everyday items. Thanks to its asymmetrical drape, his deceptively simple crisp white shirt was anything but ordinary.
—Nicole Phelps

G-Star

With multiple runways in use, G-Star delivered a typically head-spinning performance at the Hammerstein Ballroom. Exaggeration, from the catwalk choreography to the stage-setting, is par for the course at this brand's shows, and this season they ratcheted up the hyperbole with oversize outerwear in superbright shades of grass green, sky blue, and caution-tape yellow. There was hardly a jean in sight.

As if in retort to the evening's less-than-gorgeous meteorological state (rain, snow, slush), manic colors were splashed on foul-weather gear. Toggle coats and slickers looked cozy, if a bit cartoonish, with their big pockets, but the addition of a loopy, abstract beret to one of the looks was a reminder not to take things too seriously. Behind the models, a screen flashed the phrase "The good things still exist" in different languages. The bass beat was so loud, a few guests looked like they might bounce off their benches, but everyone did seem to have a good time.
—Alison Baenen

Gucci

"I've grown up. It's more mature clothes for more mature women, because that's what I am," Frida Giannini said after her show. She's only 38, and hardly middle-aged, but this season Giannini's designing seems to be hitting the kind of equilibrium Stella McCartney reached a couple of years back: the confidence to relax and not try too hard to be super-duper fashion-y. Things began with a calm opening exit of cream, dove gray, and barely there top-to-toe color—a couple of fitted dresses, a slim patchworked ostrich and suede coat shown with matching opaque tights and shoes. With that, Giannini deleted the expectation that this was to be a frenetic seasonal Gucci trend-grab. It was more about consolidating her look: the pants she's always been good at tailoring, put together with coats and fur-patched jackets with a believably glamorous daywear attitude.

Giannini quoted the nineties and the sixties in her program notes. Inescapably, that brings up Tom Ford, but the reference only really applied to the early boot-cut pants and GG logo phase of his career, when he himself was reanimating Gucci's earlier history as a manufacturer of sporty Italian separates. Giannini's pants, narrow and fluted just enough to fit over the shoe, looked proportionally right. They were flatteringly tailored over the backside (these things are crucial, after all) and great when paired with an A-line suede coat with a fox vest liner, or her several versions of cropped mélanged fur jackets.

When she showed dresses, Giannini ditched ultrashort for a slightly longer length, with leg-fitting suede thigh boots reaching up to the hemline—a way to be sexy without too much tarty-ness. All that, done within a pale palette of neutrals, meant she essentially had a new, quite refreshing look done and dusted. The Gucci finale parade of eveningwear—all short black dresses intercut with snake-patterned lace and ostrich—seemed more like going through the motions of a requisite brand ritual to keep up red-carpet business. That's part of the job description here, of course. But with this collection, Giannini's far more important achievement was to restore the idea that Gucci ready-to-wear might have a viable life in daylight.
—Sarah Mower

Haider Ackermann

When a designer's profile rises, as Haider Ackermann's has these last several seasons, the pressures to please both early followers and new retail accounts can prove challenging. But Ackermann is as confident as ever; with his serenely gorgeous new collection, he proved that his commercial powers are equal to his impressive creative ones.

Ackermann doesn't alter the building blocks from season to season. His signature fitted leather and suede vests and jackets are back, but this time with even more drama. That's thanks to both long, undulating collars that can be wrapped around the neck any number of ways and zipped-on peplums that are easily detached, should the woman wearing them so choose. "I wanted it to be totally up to you," he said backstage, alluding to the clothes' timely utilitarianism. On the bottom, his fans' options will include, as usual, leather leggings or floor-scraping skirts with deep slits, along with new, more tailored trousers.

If there was a shortage of the sinuous silk evening numbers that Hollywood has come to appreciate—a laser-cut leather gown with an extravagant flounce at the back was strictly editorial—it was because the designer focused on more commercial offerings for day, like elegant silk pantsuits and striking cocoon coats. Unzipped a bit, they possessed some of the sculptural beauty of his vests and jackets. As a gateway drug to the world of Haider Ackermann, they look like quite seductive stuff.
—Nicole Phelps

Halston

For his new gig at Halston, Marios Schwab was less engaged by the late designer's archive than by his ambition: to create something timeless for strong women. Schwab says that's his goal, too, and he achieved it when the woman evoked by his classically draped dresses with their flippy little skirts was Diana the Huntress. (Well, Schwab was born in Greece, where a little myth goes a long way.) The Halston legacy has defeated the best intentions of a handful of designers over the past few decades, but now there's a Heritage range to corral the classics (fronted by Sarah Jessica Parker, who showed up at the presentation today, along with Halston owner Harvey Weinstein), so Schwab has a more open playing field. He made the most of it with a collection that was a notably confident extension of his own aesthetic. An acute body-consciousness has always defined his work. Here, one of his inspirations was the fluidity of mercury, hence all that draping. The dress in sculpted neoprene offered a modern variation on the theme. More tricksy were the dresses with epaulets extended to wrap and define the models' forms. They trapped, rather than wrapped.

In one way at least, Schwab honored the name on the label. Another of his inspirations was apparently the set design of the 1978 Faye Dunaway vehicle Eyes of Laura Mars, which loaned a color palette of rich neutrals—in a sweater dress with fur sleeves, for instance—that was set off by shots of intense color, like the yellow knit cape dress or the red jersey gown. Sophisticated urban dressing, in other words, and that's Halston to the core. Schwab also brought in London-based jeweler Jacqueline Rabun to create silver accessories whose organic shapes echoed Elsa Peretti's classic pieces for Halston.
—Tim Blanks

Helmut Lang

Urban expansion—as in building modern structures on top of historic ones—was the lofty concept Nicole and Michael Colovos took as their starting point for Fall. In particular, the Helmut Lang designers looked at the work of Santiago Calatrava. You could see what they were getting at in the way they built up their shearling- or rabbit-collared, cropped, and fitted jackets with arching swatches of texturized wool, blistered leather, and neoprene. There was also the clever manner in which their stretch-denim jeans were seamed to keep the fabric snug around the bum and thighs. Likewise, the organic prints on their draped silk dresses were engineered to make the most of a woman's natural curves, while the tone-on-tone sequins of jersey dresses followed the sinew lines of the body.

Never mind the architectural conceit, though. The real proof comes in front of the dressing-room mirror, and the Colovoses clearly know that. The building blocks underpinning the continued success of this contemporary line are fit, which the designers care passionately about, and the fact that you get so much fashion for the price.
—Nicole Phelps

Hermès

Lily Cole as a black-leather catsuit-ed Emma Peel in the Hermès remake of the sixties British TV series The Avengers. Pourquoi? Actually, in a tongue-in-cheek way, it made a kind of sense for this bastion of French values. First, it gave Jean Paul Gaultier the license to hook in a spoofy power-woman stereotype for the season (a character fashion's toying with now). Second, it brought in masculine tailoring by way of Savile Row (the bowler hats and furled umbrellas were clearly the accoutrements of Peel's partner-in-sleuthing John Steed, or the Whitehall Spymaster out of James Bond). This apparent Anglophilia might have been expected to cause an international incident, given the Franco-British rivalry that's existed since Agincourt. Somehow, though, Gaultier managed to swing the whole thing around to end up as a pretty effective demonstration of classic Hermès values.

Having established his references, clever old Gaultier was, first of all, able to make sly fun of the kinky-fetish aspects of so much black leather-wearing—something that has indeed crossed the mind as a slight issue of taste in many a show this season. When Gaultier sets about using napa leather at Hermès, however, his real concern is to cut a regular and discreet jacket or coat, the likes of which is one of the foundations of the house ready-to-wear. The saddlelike epaulets with dangling vestigial stirrups may be discounted as a prank—get past them and the bowlers and the umbrellas, and what you begin to see is impeccable tailoring, with no egregious extras as far as trendiness is concerned.

That settled, Gaultier was free to use the remainder of the collection to sneak in such fare as casual-deluxe duffels, parkas, and sporty vests, along with the superb knitwear of the house. Still, he was stumped on eveningwear. He's not alone in that, this being the season of the comeback of day. But fringed mohair blankets arranged in tiers, as evening skirts? That was a joke that was just a joke.
—Sarah Mower

Hervé Léger by Max Azria

It's a wonder that Lubov and Max Azria didn't turn to athletic inspirations for their Hervé Léger collection before today. The classic Léger bandage dress has a strongly sporty aspect all on its own, so adding a graphic, peak-performance element makes an awful lot of sense. "We realized that if you wear Hervé Léger, you have to be in shape," explained Lubov backstage after the show. "You know, you lace up tennis shoes, so we started to lace up bodices—and then moved on to ergonomics."

The iconic ribbons and bandages curved on the body in downhill-racer-sleek forms, some inset with mesh panels. Yet more sporty spice came from the black neoprene jacket and coat laced from shoulder to wrist. There were lots of beautiful pales, but also—as seen on the new second-skin, skinny laced pants—a great dark sci-fi vein here, too (that will be manna to those who mourn the loss of Phi).

For those Léger fans who prefer their glamour less aggressive, there were softer velvet dresses, and dresses with a flocking technique that the Azrias used in curved flanges on hips. Designing a garment composed only of bandages poses a unique creative conundrum. "I think it's more exciting, because you have the parameters," said Lubov. "You have to create more and more. It's a challenge, but we love it." And so do we.
—Meenal Mistry

Holly Fulton

With her bright, chic, optimistic geometries and jazzy, matching accessories, Holly Fulton is a distinctive new Scottish voice making a name for herself in London. Her first solo presentation (she came through Fashion East via the Royal College of Art) was a concise mini-affair of 23 looks, during which she reconfirmed her obsessions with Art Deco and sixties graphics—a combination of print, cutout plastics, and chunks of faceted Swarovski almost as big as the cat's-eye studs used in roads.

Fulton upped her game this time by adding suede, fur, and snakeskin to the mix. It came off well in a sophisticated teal suede coat with black Toscana fur sleeves, as well as in a couple of fur clutches emblazoned with crystal fastenings. Altogether, it's an impressive start for a young designer who already has a British fashion award for jewelry design under her belt (she's been commissioned by Nadja Swarovski to design a collection for Atelier Swarovski). Fulton has only just relocated her studio from Edinburgh to London, and developing quietly at a geographic distance from the big city has stood her in good stead. The next few seasons will tell whether this highly organized, sensible designer will be able to turn her creative flair into commercially profitable lines. She'll need to start working with manufacturers who can finesse some of her product to higher specs, but as far as having a clear brand proposition is concerned, Holly Fulton already has it all lined up.
—Sarah Mower

House of Holland

To claim that a 26-year-old designer has gone back to his roots would sound like describing a dress as vintage because you bought it last year. So perhaps it would be better to say that, in his latest collection, Henry Holland—the affable designer behind the winkingly named House of Holland—returned to the garment that made his name back in ye olden time of, um, 2006: the slogan T-shirt.

But life moves pretty fast in the world of the twentysomething, so whereas back then Holland made couplets out of fellow designers' names ("Do me daily, Christopher Bailey" being a particularly memorable one), this time the T-shirts featured acronyms that were incomprehensible to anyone over 27. Of course, they make perfect sense to the OMG LOL kids, and few designers are more a part of that generation than Holland. Even his front row reflected this, clogged as it was with the paparazzi-friendly likes of Alexa Chung and Pixie Geldof. Why are these people famous? Ask a teenager. Nonetheless, they nearly caused a fight among the overexcited paps.

Whether Holland is a mere youthful flash in the Zeitgeist remains to be seen. This collection was definitely fun, but then, so is Topshop.

Taking downtown New York as inspiration (possibly influenced by the designer's best friend Agyness Deyn, who now lives there), the clothes were sporty and sparky. A bandanna-style print was repeated throughout, and the wedge shoes by Charlotte Olympia sat atop platforms with stripes so thick and bright they looked like Neapolitan ice cream. As is always the way with Holland, details stood out more than the whole, such as the cute gray knee-high socks topped with gold-chain prints, or the stiffened bandannas that affixed the high side ponytails. Nonetheless, la fille Geldof was entranced throughout, taking photos of each outfit on her iPhone—and in this crowd, there is surely no clearer sign of success than that.
—Hadley Freeman

Iceberg

There was a marked change for the better at Iceberg this season, and we have Alfred Hitchcock to thank. Taking cues from the early-sixties costumes of his icy blonde movie heroines Kim Novak and Tippi Hedren, the collection had picnic-blanket-check blouses worn with calf-length pencil skirts, long ribbed cardigans topping ankle-cropped pants, and tailored coats in menswear checks and plaids with Mongolian lamb collars. Those men's shirts were worn suspended from the shoulders with a black ribbon and could've come from the wardrobes of the Hollywood director's dapper leading men.

Iceberg didn't break any new ground here, of course-—Hitchcock has long been a favorite with designers. Still, the collection looked more right for today than usual, thanks to the slightly oversize and slouchy shapes, and those hits of fur here and there. If knit sweaters and tanks with missing backs lost the plot, there was a lot here that looked destined for success on the selling floor.
—Nicole Phelps

Isaac Mizrahi

"I've been thinking about camping," said Isaac Mizrahi on the phone a week before his show. "It's a theme I always return to—anoraks, parkas, Eskimos, plaid, quilting." But for this dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker, the wilderness in question was Central Park, that woodsy refuge bordered by Bergdorf's and the Met (where, incidentally, he plucked a few threads of inspiration from the Japanese armor show for his own).

The designer had endless witticisms to describe his direction. "Think Geoffrey L.L. Bean," said his show notes. "Or even Buffalo Bill Blass." And the first grouping in the show? "Parka Avenue," natch. But snappy turns of phrase aside, this was Mizrahi in fine form, not allowing his camp fantasy to whisk the collection away into Never-Wear Land. In fact, he made a pretty convincing argument that the uniform of 10022 could do with a dose of outdoorsy-ness. Why not tie a fur hood over your silver sequined bomber and brocade skirt? And shouldn't every woman have a boxy, bracelet-sleeve Barbour-esque quilted jacket to throw over her lunch suit when the weather's frightful? (To underline his point, Mizrahi provided fake snow.)

The show wasn't without its clunky moments, but there were more than enough truly chic and wearable ones to let those slide. "Oh, the theme is great clothes," relented Mizrahi at the end of our call. It's not as snappy a remark as the rest, but translated to the runway, it looked pretty darn good.
—Meenal Mistry

Isabel Marant

Isabel Marant fans may want to sit down before reading this: There wasn't a studded, cuffed suede ankle bootie in sight on her Fall runway. The signature boots have inspired instant wait lists around the world and sell out within hours of arriving in stores, but backstage Marant said she was ready for a change.

The pointy-toed pumps with the floppy bows on the sides weren't her only news. Like plenty of other designers, she's been riffing on the eighties for a couple of seasons with much success, but for Fall she was thinking fifties. As in: fitted jeans rolled up mid-calf, a faded denim jacket, a sparkly tee, cat-eye eye liner, a high ponytail, and long dangly earrings.

Marant threw in a silver lamé party dress and draped and wrapped miniskirts here and there, but the show was essentially a teasing out of the many different ways to riff on that core look. There was a stripey rugby sweater worn with short silver paillette leggings, a leather-sleeved baseball jacket with cropped red motorcycle leather pants, a white rabbit jacket and black capris, and so on. If it came off as repetitive to the in-crowd at the show, there were enough sexy/easy/shiny bits to have Marant's followers thronging to her about-to-open Soho boutique, It boots or no.
—Nicole Phelps

Issa

If one is to judge a label by its front row—which is, after all, the point of the front row—what on earth to make of Issa? Its prime seating section proudly showcased the likes of Peaches Geldof and Pippa Middleton, sister of Kate, girlfriend of Prince William. In other words, English girls famous for their relatives.

Likewise, there is a distinct sense that Daniella Issa Helayel's label is struggling to find its own way—at least on the evidence of today's collection, which teetered between smart clothes for grown women and overly embellished flotsam and jetsam for It girls. The latter may have brought Issa initial attention in its early days, but Helayel should start focusing on the former, because, to go by what was on the runway, that is where her strengths actually lie.

There was a lovely middle section of plain gray wool dresses that were a lot sexier and smarter than they sound. The quilted jackets with sequined shoulder pads on the outside, however, were not. Similarly, the best dress of the bunch was probably a long, plain deep burgundy number that came toward the end of the show. Yet the completely beaded version of the same style that followed nearly ruined the memory of its chicer predecessor. What's more, it was worn with ankle boots. Ankle boots? With a long dress? That suggested Helayel also needs to move on from her current stylist if she wants to take her label to the next, cooler, less Geldof-ed level.
—Hadley Freeman

Issey Miyake

There's always been as much science as there is art in an Issey Miyake collection. Dai Fujiwara consolidated the connection with Fall's offering, inspired by the revolutionary mathematician William Thurston's geometric models for the shape of the universe. As abstract as that sounds, the result was an often breathtaking evolution of last season's rainbow-nation tribalism. After the show, Fujiwara and Thurston wrapped themselves for the press in a long stretch of red tubing to make the point that something that looks random is actually (according to Thurston) "beautiful geometry."

The same idea was explored in outfits that were draped in ropes of knit tubing, or jackets piped to mirror the mathematician's graphic formulae. The twists and turns of quilted, ruched, ribbed, and shirred pieces were also Thurston-inspired. Maybe it was the rigor of mathematical thought that loaned the collection more structure and elegance than it's had previously. It was especially obvious in spectacular coats and jackets, like the funnel-collared coat in orange tweed; or a cocoon of tweed woven with silver lamé; or a biker jacket, also in tweed. The cocoon shape appeared again in layered knits that were as fine as mousseline. And, speaking of fine, the very last piece sealed the deal on a splendid collection. It was a coat made from squares of translucent black organdy, stitched with stars that looked to be shining.

Two decades ago, in the same venue, Romeo Gigli transfixed Paris with a show so rich and romantic that it moved its audience to tears. Maybe that didn't happen today, but, at the very least, Fujiwara used his inspiration to blend art and science in a manner so rich and romantic, it stirred the emotions in a way that reminded us of Gigli.
—Tim Blanks

J.Crew

Edie Beale goes to Girl Scout camp. Creative director Jenna Lyons' starting point for J.Crew's Fall collection meant that the label's rumpled chambray button-downs, boyfriend chinos, utility jackets, and tweedy coats were accessorized to the hilt with Albertus Swanepoel hats, brooches and necklaces galore, textured tights, ankle socks, and desert boot wedges, as well as spangled, fur-trimmed shoulder bags. "I'm not expecting people to dress like this," Lyons said at Milk Studio's sun-drenched penthouse studio, referring to the Grey Gardens-influenced styling. "But they could, and I would love it if they did."

The important point is that, following the lead of the company's cleverly curated catalogs, there was ample opportunity to deconstruct the looks and find plenty of gotta-have-them, affordable basics, along with some truly special pieces. Among the on-trend surprises: an olive-drab vest with Mongolian shearling lining, a sweater jacket trimmed in alpaca, and, yes, diaper shorts—all pieces with that "Oh, is that J.Crew?" potential. "I love it when people ask that," said Lyons, who has been on a roll lately. "But why are they so surprised?"
—Nicole Phelps

J. Mendel

Fur has been everywhere this week, and you couldn't expect Gilles Mendel, scion of the grand old furrier family, to just ignore it. Almost half the looks he presented today centered around something fuzzy and luxe. "I experimented a lot with fur techniques this season," Mendel said. "I wanted the pieces to feel textured and light." This was accomplished with patchworking (in the case of an asymmetrical vest of muskrat and raccoon) and bleaching (as in a silver fox hooded jacket with an interesting depth of color). A sequined wool dress with fox epaulets, meanwhile, was a posh nod to the current military trend.

Moonmilk, a series of images of caves by the photographer Ryan McGinley, informed the eveningwear palette of rust, Prussian blue, and moss green. Unfortunately, we've seen the strapless, draped silhouettes from this designer before. More interesting was a little red dégradé frock that, when it caught the light, appeared to drip with shimmering stalactites. Just the thing for an uptown girl off on a night of downtown spelunking.
—Romney Leader

Jaeger London

The minimalism on New York's runways suggested that Phoebe Philo's debut for Celine last season may well prove to be as influential as all of her collections at Chloé were. Jaeger London's show didn't so much suggest this as shout its adoration for Philo from its pared-down catwalk.

And frankly, so what? There's a reason everyone has looked to Philo's work at Celine: because it's really good. And since when did anyone turn to Jaeger London for cutting-edge originality, anyway? The label is supposed to stand for female-friendly, practical, Anglo-centric cool clothes. Take out the word "clothes" and you have a description of Philo herself, so kudos to the brand for at least being smart enough to know who to look at.

And there were some lovely clothes here. There was a sharp skirtsuit with a neatly cut jacket, trimmed at all the seams with leather piping, and a gorgeous midnight blue velvet dress (OK, that one said Lanvin more than Celine). The flat ankle boots were particularly great, looking like the product of a union between an Ugg and a Vivienne Westwood pirate number (honestly, the result was a lot better than the oddly matched parentage would suggest). And there were appealing bags decked with chunky gold chains. Yes, they did look a little Marc Jacobs Stam bag-ish, since you ask, but that gold chain still looks good after all these years. London may famously—or notoriously—value originality over all, but sometimes playing it safe is a really good look.
—Hadley Freeman

Jasmine Di Milo

Jasmine Al Fayed called her collection the Puzzle Factory—providing us with an explanation for the show's one unwearable look, a single-shouldered 3-D number made out of, you guessed it, large black jigsaw pieces. That anomaly aside, Al Fayed has become adept at making a slinky party frock priced in that sweet spot between contemporary and designer. Tonight's winner was a long-sleeved jet-beaded harlequin minidress, but a sleeveless version with a flaring skirt in a less-glam harlequin crochet also has legs. On the simpler side, a red jersey dress with cutouts at the hips will attract the wannabe Gucci girl. And on the more maximal end—because, let's face it, minimal doesn't really play with the party set—a plunging black velvet tank dress with iridescent beading looked like fun. Al Fayed made stabs at fur jackets and cloth coats, but they lacked the personality of her after-dark options.
—Nicole Phelps

Jason Wu

With their electric colors and abbreviated hemlines, the Spring clothes that Jason Wu showed last September sent a clear message: Grateful as he was for the attention he received after Michelle Obama wore his gown on inauguration night, he didn't want to become recognized for just one kind of look. Now, for Fall, he seems determined to move even further from the princess dresses that were his first claim to fame. If the results were occasionally uneven, you can't fault the 27-year-old designer's impulse to expand the scope of what he's known for.

"There's a big menswear message and a big outerwear message," he said a couple of days before his show. The starting point for his short-sleeve jackets, oversize cashmere coats, boxy mohair sweaters, and fold-over trousers was Irving Penn—the man himself, not his works. Plaid jackets and crisp white shirts were the late photographer's daily uniform. Here, they had an appealing, shrugged-on sensibility that suggests Wu has noticed the movement elsewhere in fashion toward clean, spare classics.

Penn's photographs were also an influence, as it turned out, evident in some of the collection's key prints. Those aren't polka dots on that strapless shantung bubble dress, they're a reproduction of a cigarette-burn print. Cast-off negatives of chemical spills, meanwhile, inspired the gold leafing on Wu's duchesse satin sheaths. It didn't all work: Some experiments in eveningwear, namely a pair of black hand-draped Chantilly lace dresses, lacked the effervescent quality of Wu's best designs. But he was back to form with an off-the-shoulder dress with pheasant feathers trapped between layers of tulle, as well as an almost weightless plume-print silk tulle strapless style. It's a pity the West Chelsea venue wasn't better lit to allow a closer look.
—Nicole Phelps

Jean Paul Gaultier

The invitation was the first clue we were in for a global melting pot at Jean Paul Gaultier: It pictured a mixed-up map of the world, with Mexico next to Togo, Morocco abutting India, Russia and Greece side by side, and so on. And the runway certainly delivered. From top to bottom his favorite model, Coco Rocha, wore an African-print turban, a peacoat with a silk chinoiserie lining to match her narrow skirt, neon green tights, and brick red cowboy boots. And Coco got off easy. Another model sported a babushka, a Masai necklace, a leather motorcycle jacket, a Mexican-blanket skirt, checked harem pants, yellow stockings, red tennis socks, and green platform sandals.

It was absolutely as over-the-top as it sounds, and the message, if there really was one, was somewhat obscured by the fact that Gaultier is always working some sort of wacky theme. But the general gist—that the world is flat, and how we dress now is an ever-changing series of mash-ups—was pretty spot-on.

Subtract the gimmicky shoes and the costumey hats and, as usual, there were some fantastic clothes here. The expertly cut Gaultier trench showed up in many different guises: shrunken and cropped at the hip, cutaway at the thighs in front and trailing a long hem, or in black with a kimono-silk lining. At one end of the colorful spectrum was a louche smoking jacket, and, at the other, cozy-chic knits and some casually luxe furs. The protesters gathered in force outside would've booed loudly at the fur-trimmed backpack Gaultier borrowed from Sasha Pivovarova for his photo op. On the three-cheers side: He deserves props for the most diverse casting of Paris fashion week.
—Nicole Phelps

Jen Kao

"I'm slow and patient," Jen Kao said backstage after tonight's show. That's not a bad way to be, both in moral-driven fables and when you're a young fashion designer. Kao's Fall collection came across as a measured but firm evolution of her witchy, cool-girl look. The designer opened with a series of ultra-sexy but sophisticated knit dresses that seem destined for the closet of front-row fan Julia Restoin-Roitfeld. From there, Kao pushed her signature diamond-pattern paneling into new luxe and directional waters. She mentioned Moby Dick as an inspiration, but with the dramatic, high-collared furs and futuristic seaming—not to mention the straight-cut bangs—there were definite shades of Blade Runner. Still, two clear standouts—a body-hugging oxblood leather dress with the sexy flip of godet pleats, and a near-sheer seamed turtleneck tucked into a beautifully executed rabbit-fur skirt trimmed with Eddie Borgo-designed hardware—didn't fit into any overarching theme. Unfortunately, evening is still a work in progress: Kao's paneled takes on the gown never fully crystallized into an elegant look. The exception was a lovely, high-necked, almost Victorian embroidered gown that would do any woman, whether replicant or human, proud.
—Meenal Mistry

Jenni Kayne

"I've always loved to see what my sister is wearing when she goes to the barn," Jenni Kayne said before her show, explaining Fall's strong equestrian bent. Turns out both Kayne girls ride—Jenni's horse, Cupid's Valentine, has a birthday coming up—and the designer called upon personal experience to craft a polished collection that isn't likely to see the inside of many stables.

Although only 15 looks were shown, more variety wasn't really needed, because the numbers presented were so strong. Jodhpur shorts, in reindeer and wool, were perfect cuffed and worn a bit loose. Up top, a sheared-rabbit shell had a gorgeous tactility. Posing a lovely contrast were the slim, silky trousers Kayne envisioned as an alternative to cocktail dresses for after six. A simple T-shirt dress in forest green leather was a stunner, but the real showpiece was a mud-cloth anorak. Deceptively lightweight, the jacket had oversize pockets and exposed stitching that lent it a workmanlike feel and a patina of age. Still, utilitarian as it was, it's destined for city life, not country labor.
—Alison Baenen

Jeremy Laing

On the evening of the Olympic opening ceremonies in Vancouver, Canadian Jeremy Laing paid tribute to some of his country's vast natural resources. "There's Northern elements—but presented in a refined way," the 29-year-old Toronto native said of his Fall collection. "It's not about trapper style."

A long, hooded maxi dress was printed with an interpretation of a Pacific First Nations print, and the incredible lightweight fur coats (a first for the designer) were made of beaver, raccoon, and muskrat pelts sustainably hunted in the Canadian wild. Also noteworthy was the new knitwear line, in particular a sumptuous, four-gauge, oversize wool sweater with 3-D dots. All told, Laing was savvy to shift away from the complicated architectural silhouettes he has emphasized in the past to focus more on texture and surface.
—Romney Leader

Jeremy Scott

"I can be a freak, every day of every week," boomed from the sound system. It was the new single from Estelle, debuting at the show (as she sat in the front row)—but it might just as well have been Jeremy Scott's own cri de coeur. Scott is one of fashion's freak-flag fliers, and proudly so. This is a guy who makes coats of Mickey Mouse gloves and dresses in Flintstones prints. But as his collections go, Fall was downright normal.

Hanger Appeal, his salute to fashion itself, featured a blend of sporty, salable print pieces (here, featuring a leggy fashion-mag illustration), riffs on the classics (Le Smoking; the JPG cone bra, recast as a pair of pasties/suspenders), and a lengthy section of Lucite jewel- and cross-covered dresses, bodysuits, and tops ("cross dressing," yuk, yuk). There were the showstoppers, of course, including the pièce de résistance, an elegant evening dress with a long train that was actually an attached slip, carried by the model on a gilded Jeremy Scott hanger.

Given our choice, we'd take the knits—the best of them, a batwing sweater that spelled out "Fashion" and "Style" with the arms extended—or the tricked-out Schott moto jackets, bedecked with fur sleeves, more jewels, and a profusion of brass J.S. plaques. Scott's always had a way of ribbing über-branding and practicing it, all at once. He knows that people do pray at the altar of fashion, hence all the crosses. But in a mostly black lineup (color appeared, as he put it, only when "chaperoned by black"), the clothes felt less jokey, more witty than in seasons past. It's his first show back in New York in years, and the city obviously agrees with him. Just take it from the song that played as he took his bow: He's in an "Empire State of Mind."
—Matthew Schneier

Jill Stuart

It was a cross-generational moment backstage at Jill Stuart as the designer introduced her mother, a former designer, and daughter Morgan, who's now working with Stuart and joined her for a post-show bow. Her Fall muses spanned decades as well. "I was thinking of women like Charlotte Gainsbourg and Marianne Faithfull," she said. "Women who aren't afraid of mixing prints and silhouettes and textures."

The dark, rock 'n' roll-tinged mix on the runway included sexy body-con draping and its polar opposite, heavy menswear tailoring with chunky, sometimes head-swallowing, knits. Dresses came very short and tightly wound around the body, some with asymmetrical necks, others with big shoulders—a sort of Balmain for the teenybopper set. However, one of the best, a black lacquered lace frock, had only a nipped waist. These abbreviated numbers will no doubt be well received by the global flock of trend-loving girls who have made Stuart's business a booming one, but what was more interesting here were the less skin-baring looks. Hooded sweater coats and menswear-inspired evening options, like a tuxedo jacket and shorts or a lace blouse tucked into high-waisted trousers, had a sophistication that's often missing at this label.
—Meenal Mistry

Jil Sander

Women buzzing to and fro in neat-to-the-body jackets, sheer shorts, bodysuits, tailored catsuits, and formfitting coats, equipped with Velcro-fastened flat boots and handbags. What was this about? In the words of creative director Raf Simons: "Women who have a target, and go for it."

That motivational motto might respectably be emblazoned above the door of every Jil Sander store as a welcome to all who must travail under the yoke of executive womanhood. Simons had come to this philosophical distillation after watching Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and The September Issue, and traces of the wardrobes of both movies' stars—Angelina Jolie's stretchy shorts suits, and Anna Wintour's fitted tweed checks—were merged, streamlined, and reanimated on the runway.

Simons' earnest search for a way to represent pared-down, practical dressing for grown women in the twenty-first century is, of course, part of the broader fashion debate that has erupted this season, and it's one that this brand, above all, has to take on. Though part of the collection was posited in sci-fi and computer-game fantasy (the all-in-ones and knitted shorts suits), the rest (fly-front jackets, skirtsuits, and slim coats) still essentially came back to the stock patterns of the Jil Sander nineties. Simons' choices of fabric—the softly colored windowpane checks, scumbled tweeds and knits—are undoubtedly supple, deceptively light, easy to wear, wholly of today. But the questions still left hovering over his severe vision of the female go-to-work uniform are legion. Does a new generation of breadwinners really want to go back to the strict suiting patterns their elders felt dynamic in 15 years ago? Is "minimal," in that sense, actually retro? And does the sight of so many women powering around like work-driven robots reflect back an image that leaves us more uncomfortable than inspired?
—Sarah Mower

John Galliano

If you felt like you'd seen it all before at John Galliano, it's because you did. At least in some ways: A year ago, he sent out a parade of Russian/Balkan folkloric princesses; this season, as his program explained, "a tribe of adventuring nomads" trekked "through a mountainous terrain, crossing imaginary borders in search of a new land." Last March, there was fake snow; today, his bronzed, bewigged, and behatted models walked through a blizzard of silver glitter. There were some striking similarities between the two collections' clothes, too, starting with the very first pannier-skirted caban coat.

Of course, Galliano's workmanship was, as ever, top-notch. And the imaginative melding of cultures and eras into single outfits—a popular theme this weekend, with Jean Paul Gaultier exploring similar territory—was something to marvel at, too, especially near the end, when bias-cut gowns aswirl with yak fur (not as strange as it sounds) made their grand entrance.

However, now, even more than a year ago, there is a rather glaring disconnect between this spectacle of a show and the bigger fashion picture, with its new focus on simplicity. The fireworks (yes, fireworks) that accompanied Galliano's bow only threw that disparity into higher relief.
—Nicole Phelps

Jonathan Saunders

Slightly abstract pleated skirts with parkas or graphically printed overcoats: Jonathan Saunders' Fall collection was, as he put it, "about ease, and getting back to daywear." With the emphasis on drop waists and a sportier attitude, the proportions skewed longer, sometimes to below the knee. If not exactly minimal, there was a modernist punch about it all that seemed fresh, especially when Saunders used bold printing effects (which looked like roller painting) to create zones of matte and shine. At its best—as in a black coat bisected with a broad horizontal band of silver and a skirt with a sharply angled silver patch to match—it captured something of the long-lamented energy of Helmut Lang's urban chic, a simplicity and brevity of expression several designers have been harking back to this season.

But what had become of the long dresses printed in vibrant colors Saunders used to do so well? This season, although there was a passage of fringed skirts cut from tags of fabric that might be construed as "cocktail," he ended on a non-evening note, with a cashmere intarsia sweater pulled over a skirt. Perhaps he didn't want to compromise his day-wardrobe statement, but it was a disappointment that he passed up the chance to further develop a look he's so good at.
—Sarah Mower

Juan Carlos Obando

"I wanted to show that we could cut a dress," Juan Carlos Obando said after his deceptively simple Fall show. With a minimum of extras on the runway (save for George Esquivel's thigh-high, lace-up "boot extensions," which created a minor and sexy distraction), attention was trained on the garments themselves, and Obando's scissor skills were plainly on display. His tailoring indeed proved to be faultless.

A high-collared wool jacket had a futuristic equestrian feel; paired with slim trousers in the same shade of sand, it made a supremely chic pantsuit. Flattering curved seams elevated simple sheaths, while worsted wool pants in two subtle tones of olive were especially becoming when seen from behind.

A brown bomber jacket looked like leather but turned out to be waxed mud cloth. It was structured but delightfully worn-in and rumpled. A trio of hand-pleated gowns in black and pale, pale neutrals closed the show. They were technically sound, but after so many clean, streamlined silhouettes, they seemed like an unnecessary flourish rather than a conclusion.
—Alison Baenen

Julian Louie

A short film featuring Ukrainian model Jules Mordovets lounging in a variety of Julian Louie ensembles was how the designer presented his Fall line. "There's intense workmanship in these clothes," he told Style.com, as the camera panned across a blouse to reveal a smattering of Swarovski pearls, "and those are the details that get lost in a show."

A focus on laid-back silhouettes—carried over from Spring—unified the collection. It ranged from a pieced-together silk T-shirt paired with velvet peg-leg trousers to a roomy ruffle-trimmed dress embroidered with a floral motif inspired by a chair once owned by Marie Antoinette.

It was difficult to trace how Louie, who made a name for himself with sharp lines and a knack for color-blocking, came to create some of the more ornate pieces. By contrast, a silk-and-velvet tee with the aforementioned pearl embroidery, worn tucked into a simple black velvet miniskirt, felt like a more natural evolution. In any case, Louie has a talent for clothes that are at once special and wearable. Judging by the influential buyers in attendance tonight, we're not the only ones who think so.
—Romney Leader

Julien Macdonald

The window dressing of Julien Macdonald's business has moved way upmarket. Gainsbury & Whiting produce his show, George Cortina styles it, Charlotte Tilbury is in charge of maquillage, Steve Mackey's on the decks, et cetera, et cetera. But Macdonald himself brought things back down to earth with a cheerfully vulgar bump when he talked about the inspiration for his new collection. Jilly Cooper is the mistress of a literary medium known in England as "the bonk-buster," and it was her book Riders that turned Jools on for Fall 2010. The designer imagined a woman hot and bothered after a day on her horse, slipping into something sinful when she got home. So the collection breezily straddled two poles: sophisticated outerwear and suggestive, lingerie-influenced evening attire. The second outfit—a white, fur-trimmed parka with gray flannel jodhpurs—was followed by a rococo micro confection of flesh-toned chiffon and black lace.

And thus was the day-and-night rhythm of the presentation determined. The knits that first made Macdonald's reputation were skillfully represented here—on the one hand, by a substantial cable-stitched top, and on the other, by the merest suggestion of cobweb knit that wreathed one model's slender frame. There was a Ghesquière-esque touch in some of the short draped or plisséd dresses, but Macdonald carved out a new signature for himself with hybrid garments like a black leather biker jacket attached to a navy wool skirt, or a dress that featured the bottom half of a jacket bonded to a negligée top. It may sound a little unconvincing on paper, but on the catwalk, it certainly had the courage of its bonk-busting convictions. You can see why this kind of thing has courted a whole new client for Macdonald's fusion of hard and soft. And, hey, that same formula has sold millions for Jilly Cooper.
—Tim Blanks

Junya Watanabe

There's nothing newsy about the fact that Junya Watanabe fuses street clothes with something romantic-y. It's his beat. At this point, the things to keep an eye on are the by-products of his seasonal excursions into cross-referencing, rather than the conceit itself. For Fall, then, it wasn't the fact that he used a military-Edwardiana-vaguely New Look conglomeration that was particularly arresting, but the way his work concentrated the eye on skirts. Flared, flouncy, pleated, and generally bursting into swishy lower-body volume, they represented a brilliantly focused resolution of one way the fashionable silhouette is being reshaped for winter.

Watanabe's use of military-issue look-alike fabrics, parkas, anoraks, camouflage print, and MA-1 flight jackets had no aggression about it—he employs the source material more in the sense of day-to-day, season-in-season-out practical classics, examples of which are permanently present in the young person's wardrobe these days. And he's a gentle soul. The gospel choir music on his soundtrack, singing of redemption, had his audience tearing up while scribbling their personal shopping lists for Fall. You sense he's a nice guy who just wants to make everyone relax and feel happy about this stress-y fashion business.

The ideas really got going when Watanabe showed a tulle bustle shooting out of the back of a narrow military-drab skirt. From there, he riffed on accordion pleats, sometimes transposing them into drapey dresses over a base of black ribbed knitwear. The MA-1 jacket was cutely cropped, sometimes streamlined into fitted coats and then reduced to sweet, fake fur-lined bonnets. Nevertheless, it was his nailing of the skirt volume issue—crucially without dirndl-ish waist bulk—that will have his followers trotting happily off, eager to score a key component to make their wardrobes work anew next winter.
—Sarah Mower

Just Cavalli

Glam grunge. That was the (somewhat mixed) message at Just Cavalli. The models wore flashy charm necklaces and fur collars over plaid flannel button-down shirts and pleated black leather minis, or teamed oversize brown, gray, and black patchwork sweaters with tiny loden green kilts and black and gold brocade leggings. The layered look is a key Fall trend, so points go to Cavalli for doing it in his own irreverent, leopard-spotted way. Oh, yes, this show had leopard spots, sometimes two or three different prints in one outfit. There probably aren't tons of girls out there who are going to rock that head-to-toe look, and add a lace-edged dickey into the mix. But there are plenty who'd be thrilled to combine Cavalli's cropped, drab-green aviator jacket (with acid yellow shearling lining), a pair of the designer's exuberantly colorful leggings, and one of their own T-shirts.

Where things went amiss was with the molded leather pieces and the blazers made of furniture velvet. The quality didn't quite look up to snuff, and the fit was off. Bulges at the hips? No, thanks. The one thing that the Cavalli girl isn't going to compromise on is her sex appeal. Better to stick with those crazy leggings.
—Nicole Phelps

Karen Walker

Karen Walker approaches each season almost like a jazz musician. She introduces an idea, evolves it in a few directions, and then loops it back around to a fully formed composition. She called the Fall collection Salzburg, USA—an imaginary place where an American take on old-world European wardrobe traditions resides.

She opened with a matched look of puffy jacket, blazer, button-front shirt, and skinny cuffed pants all cut in a faded floral that looked like a descendant of the Von Trapp children's curtain couture. The looks that followed seemed to ask, "Just how would Americans dress for the Alps?" Well, if they had Walker's quirky-smart sense of chic, in oversize sheepskin collars, matched jacquard sweater-and-skirt sets, or a kicky, boyish loden suit. Or perhaps they'd turn the tables with a college sweatshirt, corduroys, and a balaclava that approximated either an old-school football helmet or a medieval hood. That last look is from Walker's brand-new casual line, called Runaway, which now encapsulates all her denim, T-shirts, and, from Fall, corduroy pants and sweatshirt pieces with wild, woolly fringe. About half the clothes on the runway were from Runaway.

But this isn't Walker's only bit of business news. She recently opened an alternative department store in her native Auckland, New Zealand, that stocks her collection, among others, as well as beauty and housewares. She's also looking to open a second store in Asia. This being her eighth season in New York, perhaps the next stop is Manhattan.
—Meenal Mistry

Karl Lagerfeld

"Modern is for today," Karl Lagerfeld said before his show, emphasizing his in-the-moment view of fashion, but the collection he showed under his own name impressively encompassed past, present, and future. Though the designer also featured a swingy A-line shape (in winter white, say, with silver piping and zip), the silhouette that mattered was streamlined to the nth. It was composed of a rigorously tailored jacket, its front folded back to create a kind of angular peplum, worn over a second-skin skirt-and-pants combination in a new kind of patent leather that had a flawless vinyl finish (in brown, it looked unsettlingly like chocolate). The patent was also used to line lapels or those folded jacket fronts. But equally, many of Lagerfeld's details harked back to history, like the corset detailing on one jacket or the buttons that ran up to the elbow on the sleeve of another. One navy jacket with a little stand-up collar was piped in red like a vintage military uniform. The puff of black netting on a one-shouldered silk dress added a fin de siècle touch, of old Vienna perhaps. The beaded or pleated chiffons that made up the finale had that same feel, even when worn over patent pants. The bands that held hair high off the forehead added inches of height to models who were already towering. Backstage, they set Lagerfeld to thinking about the Na'vi and Avatar and maybe even a collection of KL in 3-D eyewear.
—Tim Blanks

Kenzo

With its bricolage of classic men's fabrics and sumptuous decorative elements, Antonio Marras' own collection in Milan was one-of-a-kind poetry. A "laboratorio," he called it. It was a genuine pleasure to see some of the results of his experiments filter down to the Kenzo catwalk, in the languid interplay between feminine and masculine; the magpie trove of paillettes, buttons, and beads that decorated sober gray flannel; and the combinations of leopard and pinstripe. But these signatures were actually so compatible with Kenzo Takada's own aesthetic that it was hardly necessary to draw any clear distinction. The design of the runway said it all: willow branches woven into a spreading canopy of trees, representing the evolution of the Kenzo ideal under its current creative director.

Marras is a free spirit, untouched by passing trends, which makes him one of the few designers who can get away with claiming a quest for liberty as the reason for his collection. Freedom here meant the loosest, easiest of shapes—usually layered—in fabrics that were a patchwork of florals, plaids, embroidery, and appliqué. The pursuit of ease yielded an unfortunate jumpsuit or two, but the mood was otherwise very much the casual hippie- and vintage-influenced chic of the seventies style icons that Marras name-checked—women like Tina Chow, Marisa Berenson, Florinda Bolkan, even Farrah Fawcett, some of whom undoubtedly wore Kenzo the first time around. Toss a pinstriped jacket over a patchworked smock dress and you get the point. The hair—a tangle of pretty curls, often topped with a man's fedora—underlined it. With his own collection, at least, it's hard not to feel that Marras is radically underrated. The crowd at Kenzo today included the omnipresent Lindsay Lohan, who seemed much more agreeable than she's been the rest of the week. That possibly suggests the tide of attention may be turning Marras' way.
—Tim Blanks

Kimberly Ovitz

Few designers in their second year of business can boast a presence on Net-a-Porter, not to mention placement in the top U.S. boutiques and an impressive international distribution. But such is the path of Kimberly Ovitz. The 26-year-old Los Angeles native's line successfully merges an edgy, urban look with a more laid-back, SoCal style. For Fall, the discovery of a pair of eighteenth-century yearbooks had her thinking about modernizing old-fashioned silhouettes, evident in a deconstructed herringbone suit and a pleated chiffon skirt cut thigh-high on one side and left ankle-grazing on the other. Ovitz also likes to pepper each collection with references to her equestrienne past. This season's riding shirt with asymmetric placket was a chic update on a classic, though an oversize cardigan trimmed in braided horsetail-like fringe might have some people refusing to jump. As for how this collection builds on her previous efforts, the designer was direct: "It's pretty much a souped-up version of everything I've been doing," she said. We doubt her growing list of retailers will complain.
—Romney Leader

Kinder Aggugini

When a designer claims an influence like Madame Récamier, arch-saloniste of Napoleonic Paris, you might anticipate the historicism of a Galliano or a Westwood. And given that those two are certified fashion visionaries, you might feel nervous for the tyro prepared to take on such an excavation of the past. But Kinder Aggugini is no tyro—he's actually worked for Galliano and Westwood—and besides, he was feeling Récamier as a defiant punk of her time. It was hard edge, not historical romance, that determined the tone of a collection that should, if there is any fashion justice, be Aggugini's breakthrough.

The Napoleonic connection gave the designer the chance to do what he does best. The first outfit said it all: military-precise cut, high collar, army green with red trim but opening up to reveal the flirtiness of Kinder's signature dot lining. In other words, strict but sexy. Another topper combined the same ingredients, but it was caped, like a general's coat. There was a little drummer boy's jacket in Napoleonic red and a spectacularly sleek black coat with slash pockets lined in the same eye-catching shade. The skinny pants beneath, also red, were more Juliette Lewis than Juliette Récamier, an indication that the romance in this collection was driven by rock 'n' roll. Hence the biker jackets in black leather and velvet; the sleeveless Lurex coat over skinny pants; or the big, fuzzy bad-girl sweaters (the bold and the beautiful might brave them as dresses).

Still, Récamier's name wasn't on the invitation for nothing. Kinder's flowing jersey eveningwear was shaped by the Empire line of her era. Maybe the elegantly draped navy dresses were, too. The designer also showed muslin shirtdresses (paired here with swag-backed mohair-alpaca knits). Women back then would soak the muslin to formfitting effect, and promptly catch their death of cold. Superstar set designer Michael Howells was keen to re-create the trend for today's show, but good old health and safety said "No!" to suffering in the name of Napoleonic style.
—Tim Blanks

Koi Suwannagate

Koi Suwannagate had a few unexpected tricks up her sleeve. Her signature cashmeres and handcrafted appliqués were still in evidence, but she worked them in a funkier, more creative way. Ironically, this sportier new attitude came courtesy of ancient Japan. In particular, the kimono was a big influence. It's a fascination that dates back to Suwannagate's college days, when she wore a kimono on the job at a Japanese restaurant and struggled with the proper wrapping technique. "I got it wrong all the time!" she confessed.

Her own designs should be easier to wear. Asymmetric skirts, cut longer on the sides than in the front, came with elastic waistbands, and practically everything had pockets. Black cotton stretch pants that closed with a zipper in the back were the perfect foundation for the collection's sculpted and gathered knits. A three-tone cap-sleeve cashmere top in black, burgundy, and chocolate gathered into a knot at the front—a beautiful and chic way to wear a sweater. A short, strapless L.B.D. with abstract, oversize cashmere knot details on the front of the bodice was particularly lovely. Paired with an agate cardigan, it really popped.

Dresses, however, are usually not Suwannagate's strong point, and the season's one major off-note was a black, floor-length silk satin gown: The silhouette was awkward, and the acid green-accented train only exacerbated matters. Still, Suwannagate has considerable skill with knits, and a great eye. She and her stylist created one-of-a-kind, Calder-esque jewelry out of chunky coral and semiprecious stones for the show. If she's looking to expand her brand, that might be good place to start.
—Alison Baenen

L.A.M.B.

Gwen Stefani won't let a little last-minute emergency—as in, half of the Fall collection getting stuck in transit due to the blizzard—get her down. "We've had to scrape together what we can," she said in a preview the day before her L.A.M.B. presentation, "but it's actually forced us to be even more creative." Case in point: a "vest" she strung together on the fly by linking up several leather belts.

Explaining the mood this season, she ticked off a checklist of tried-and-true Gwen references: "vintage, boudoir, military, fifties, sexy, and futuristic." Making it all work might sound like a tall order, but the mash-up was signature Stefani, right down to the models' pinup hair and scarlet lips. Among the more successful looks was a tailored military jacket worn with skinny houndstooth jeans, a twill and boiled-wool trenchcoat, and a chic black Ponte-and-leather body-con dress. If the collection wasn't exactly concise, the variety and uniqueness of many of the pieces will get them noticed on the sales floor. And, no, you don't have to be a ska punk to pull them off.
—Romney Leader

L'Wren Scott

Marc Jacobs may have banned the celeb circus, but when L'Wren Scott does boldfaced names, it's in her own precisely chic and personal way. This season it was Brooke Shields, Selma Blair, Rachel Feinstein Currin, Ellen Barkin, Daphne Guinness, and a radiant Christina Hendricks, who recently atoned for her sartorial sins at the Golden Globes by knocking them dead in one of Scott's frocks at the Directors Guild Awards.

Scott called this collection Tuxedo Terrace, intending to explore various incarnations of the formal staple. But the second look out—a thin gray sweater layered casually over a white shirt and slim trousers—was downright casual. "I always do knits," Scott explained afterward. "I just don't always show them." There were also a pair of sequined cardies, and even if the knits weren't news, they were refreshing to see.

It was soon back to black(-tie) with all sorts of razor-pleated bibs and bow-tie collars. A couple of instances read costumey, but a tuxedo shirt transformed into a black leather dress and a lean, languid robelike coat with sequined lapels showed that it could be done to ultrarefined effect. Dovetailing with the theme of propriety was a dose of Victoriana, evident in beautiful cutaway jackets with high ruffled collars or Scott's signature schoolmarm dresses. But all work and no play.… The counterpoint was hems above mid-thigh, a slight shock if you've become accustomed to Scott's knee-obscuring lengths. The highlight was a textured bright-silver tank dress on Bruna Tenorio.

Scott has set her own bar high, and overall the collection lacked the laser-sharp focus of seasons past. Still, there were exquisite clothes here, among them the Oscar-worthy frocks that closed the show. Our favorite: a swirling sequin and marabou column, a winner before a single envelope is opened.
—Meenal Mistry

Lacoste

Lacoste gave invitees to its Fall show a book celebrating the brand's history, and there, in the photos of René Lacoste and friends at play in the thirties, was the inspiration for the opening passage. There was a striking new sophistication in the oatmeal- and stone-toned pieces: oversize outerwear wrapping some sharp jerseys and flannels for the boys and slouchy, sexy knits for the girls. Slouchiest of all was an alpaca hand-knit worn over rah-rah shorts.

The chic neutral mood soon surrendered, though, to an orgy of primary color-blocking—and a different decade of inspiration. The Lacoste croc sparkling gold on the backdrop was a cue. So were the ponytails pulled to the side. If not quite disco, there was at least a strong eighties feel to a fuzzy sweater dress sliding off one shoulder, or a jumpsuit in red jersey, or the ribbed leggings worn with almost everything. They bunched over boots in a way that would have called to Jennifer Beals. And there were distinct echoes of other style statements from fashion's favorite decade: The sweatshirt dresses said Benetton; the green jacket with the black skirt, the yellow tights, and the pink gloves could have jumped straight out of a Bill King spread for Enrico Coveri; the striped jersey dress summoned up the spirit of Sonia Rykiel. What tied together all these images that Christophe Lemaire happily ransacked for the collection? A wholesale optimism and sporty joie de vivre—and there's no copyright on that.
—Tim Blanks

Lanvin

How to satisfy the contrary demands of women's fashion desires? It's a problem vast enough to send many designers crazy, or to make them stick their heads in the sand and fall back on safe retro formulae. At this moment, when fashion finally feels like it's teetering on the brink of something new, that isn't good enough. And for designers of Alber Elbaz's caliber, the only way is to face up to complexity. For Fall, he walked a knife edge, balanced between rigorously architectural urban simplicity and explosively fierce embellishment, sourced somewhere in African tribalism.

Before his show, Elbaz reeled off the loops he'd put himself through to get there: "Women ask for masculine tailoring, but they want to feel fragile. They want daywear, but buy evening. I designed a whole lot of draped things, but then it looked like too much. An overdose of fashion." His change of heart came on returning to the studio after a meeting at the U.N. to learn about a role he is about to take up as a UNICEF ambassador. It cleared his mind to work on plain, molded city clothes on the one hand, and made him think about Africa, his birthplace, on the other.

The link between the two presented another of the season's essays on powerful womanhood. For day, it began with no-nonsense, clean silhouettes cut from matte stretch materials with a molded structure; dresses and coats were cut roomy in the shoulder, tapering to clutch the hips. The technical starkness was gradually steered away from minimalism-by-rote with the addition of chunky metal and rock-crystal jewelry and beaded spine-tracing zippers, building up to dynamic feats of diagonal pleating that crossed the torso in one direction and shot across the hips in the other.

To a soundtrack of fast-paced drumming, Elbaz kicked up the emotional speed with waves of cocktail and eveningwear that spanned simple jersey togas, erotic lace transparencies, glamorous ostrich- and marabou-decorated dresses, and intensely bejeweled and feathered gold or green-tinted lamé. In real time, it was visually sensational and layered with dynamic contradictions, like the fact that baseball jackets, sweatshirt shapes, and track pants were the carriers of some of the most exotic embroideries. That might not wholly read in photographs—blame the grim lighting in the inhospitable warehouse on the outskirts of Paris that Lanvin and other luxury-goods houses have inexplicably taken as a venue recently. But Elbaz's contribution to the season is guaranteed to keep the fashion world thinking for a long while yet.
—Sarah Mower

Lela Rose

The craggy, almost lunar landscapes of the Galápagos Islands—to which she had made a recent voyage—had Lela Rose thinking about space-age style for Fall. "These are not Battlestar Galactica looks," Rose cautioned, laughing, in a phone interview with Style.com the week before her show. "It's more about exploring the different textures observed in the universe."

Surface treatments played a bigger role than usual. Pyrite zippers added interest on the opening look, and constellationlike crystal embroidery livened up a pair of evening dresses. But it was a blousy cinched-waist frock treated to look like it had been lined with pebbles that really made an impression. Silhouettes didn't stray far from the clean-lined sporty-cocktail vein the line is known for; the beading experiments weren't overdone. Other than a gold jumpsuit Rose called Liquid Mercury, which will be a hard sell, this was a solid lineup of special-occasion wares that struck a hard-to-achieve balance between high fashion and accessibility.
—Romney Leader

Limi Feu

Marianne Faithfull singing with Metallica made the perfect soundtrack for Limi Feu's new collection. The world-weary woman bruised by love, the metal merchants pumping out their dark sounds…that said it all, really. In a sea of black, there were two white poet shirts, like moonbeams at midnight. They were the most obvious manifestations of Limi's new appetite for romance. There were plenty of others. A leather waistcoat flared into a little peplum. Layers of trailing black scarf points were Stevie Nicks in a graveyard. A sheer black skirt was trimmed in lace and wrapped in a big crocheted scarf (a black leather biker jacket anchored the look). The same crochet was also a full skirt under a highwayman's coat, though the floppy hat made the model look a little like the Creeper's girlfriend. One imagines Limi finding the gothic cross-reference quite to her taste. It certainly defined the serious hard-rock spirit of her clothes, much less polka-dot playful than in the past. But she is still adept at striking a balance between the weird and the wonderful, as in the elongated cardigan with the deep, scooped neck, or the fringed cardigan coat.
—Tim Blanks

Loewe

Stuart Vevers has unearthed a Hollywood heroine in Loewe's Madrid archive. "We recently found a visitor's book signed by Ava Gardner," he said backstage. "That's been a bit special." It explained why Old Blue Eyes was on the soundtrack of the Fall presentation. Gardner fled to live in Madrid when her marriage to Frank Sinatra was on the rocks, in 1955, after filming The Barefoot Contessa in Europe. While amusing herself with, among other things, a virile bullfighter, she also found time to pick up the occasional handmade leather item in Loewe's Gran Via store.

But what did thoughts of Ava bring to this show? A glamorous lacquered hairdo, a fur beret and demi-veil, and a ladylike gloss that sufficed to locate the styling in the on-trend decade of the season. Also: the new Ava bag, a two-handled purse that has been stripped of all hardware, leaving only the utterly smooth Spanish leather and a discreet embossed trademark to express its provenance.

That, really, is emblematic of the kind of progression Loewe needs to be making at this point. Vevers has made efforts to bring irony and trendiness to this home of traditional Spanish quality, but flash and fun in a bag doesn't sit so well in a post-crash era when women have emerged with a fresh taste for the investment classic. That new sense of purpose seemed to have reoriented the ready-to-wear, at least partly. The conventional side of the collection focused on suits with fur dickeys tucked into the neck, high-waisted A-line skirts, and Spanish-military-influenced jackets with leather trimmings—as well as thick waffle knits that follow the same train of thought as Prada's Fall collection. It didn't quite account for the presence of a cream fox-trimmed parka or the chestnut leather X-backed pinafore that closed the show—not exactly on the old-school Hollywood movie-star track. Perhaps they're items that can find purchasers in Loewe's stores, but now the company's moved into runway presentations, and the pressure is on Vevers to commit to a totally integrated, coherent offering if he's to command critical attention.
—Sarah Mower

Louise Goldin

"It's space military," said Louise Goldin, of a collection whose launching pad was the photos of Pierre Cardin's graphic sixties work and body armor pinned to her studio wall. That puts Goldin in the futurist/sci-fi substream of current trend, though in her case, it's a development of the silhouette she's been working a while. For Fall, it took her into sculptural stiff-peplumed army green or navy tunics and A-line skirts with padded 3-D geometric surfaces, as well as matte-shine splicings of leather, stingray, and fox.

Technically, Goldin's a genius in knitwear—her quilting effects and origamilike structures are the result of months spent working in Italian factories, coaxing the near-impossible out of expert machinists for her showpieces. It's a pulled-together, rigorous look, and the flashes of styling genius (like the sparkly cuffed red or pink short shorts peeking from beneath hemlines) set it apart from anything too literally Trekkie. At this stage of her career, Goldin has nothing more to prove on the accomplishment or vision fronts. More mundanely, though, her struggle is to convince the audience that her total look can be broken down into items that will merge into an everyday wardrobe. Backstage, she pulled out regular sweaters with bullet holders and pockets on the upper arms, cargo leggings, and lace-fine geometrically patterned knitted hosiery—all liable to help her salability. But she still needs to bend her uncompromising talent to making those items more evident.
—Sarah Mower

Louise Gray

London's East End fashion gang has gotten into the habit of tagging Louise Gray as a mini Vivienne Westwood. Well, you can see what they mean. Gray, a feisty little Scot with a topknot hairdo, has a quirky artistic confidence that's growing season by season. Her presentation at Somerset House—part static installation, part models bopping around—had guests smiling the minute they walked in. Playful was the word: She'd pinned her patchworked, multi-textured pieces to fairground boards—the kind with cutout holes for people to stick their heads through. It was an invitation to silliness and photo-taking that was happily taken up. (Any light relief in a grueling schedule is gratefully received by all.)

Her felt bowlers and vaguely Nostalgia of Mud-era shapes might have underlined Gray's rep as a Westwood-alike, but look closely and there's no literal parallel, no political agenda in the younger designer's work. What she's good at is messing with fabric techniques like burn-out quilting, throwing great zigzaggy patterns together, and then finishing a total look with nutty details like orange shearling tongues stuck in high-top trainers.

Fun. And as a top-to-toe look, totally individual.
—Sarah Mower

Louis Vuitton

On the final day of Paris, Marc Jacobs rounded off the Fall collections in more ways than one. Not to put too fine a point on it, this was one fashion show heterosexual men are going to understand. Breast-wise, it put it all on a plate—or rather a corseted, cantilevered, frill-edged balcony. "And God Created Woman" announced the program, bringing up thoughts of the era of the young Bardot, of fifties-sixties wasp waists, and circle skirts. And, inevitably, Miuccia Prada, who first broached the comeback of the curvy silhouette earlier in the season in Milan.

It takes a different casting approach to do justice to the refocusing of all eyes away from legs to the plentiful bosom. Thus, Jacobs had called on Laetitia Casta, Bar Refaeli, Catherine McNeil, Karolina Kurkova, and finally Elle Macpherson, all women whose physical attributes have acted as a disqualification for fashion show participation for so long. Not that the rehabilitation of the embonpoint was vulgarly done. Jacobs framed it more as a fresh, feminine, ingenue look, with hair scraped back into high, bouncy B.B. ponytails; clean makeup; and square-toed, block-heeled pumps trimmed with flat bows—another angle on the Mad Men era but this time with a charming Frenchified accent. The show swung along prettily as a fountain sprayed and jolly fifties movie music played in the middle of the tented courtyard, creating that quintessentially Parisian atmosphere, a sense of all being right in the best of all possible cities to be appreciated as a woman.

If there was little to zero variety in silhouette—and the dirndl-esque petticoated skirt can't be for the many—the items and trimmings exemplified the Vuitton knack for classy detail, as in fur buttons and collars and glittery heels. And above all, this Louis Vuitton show provided a charming backdrop to display the bags. This season, it's a zillion mignonne reinterpretations of the classic Speedy. Here, that functional shape, designed in the 1930's, came flocked and sequined, smothered in guipure lace over satin, or woven in metallic thread and done up in fox.
—Sarah Mower

Luca Luca

Raul Melgoza's fourth full collection at the helm of Luca Luca was his most confident and successful to date. Playing with contrasts, both with textures and tailoring—curved seams, for example, on linear shapes—he continued to pursue his architectural agenda.

A short, navy tweed jacket with the lacquered finish Melgoza favored this season had an oversize, sculptural collar; the sheen on the nubby fabric gave this day look a luxurious, dressed-up feel. There were many such subtle touches, like the single sequined shoulder on a gray shift. Other fabrics, unfortunately, didn't have quite the same restraint: The leathers were too shiny, and one lacquered-silk skirt looked a bit like a trash bag. Of the three evening dresses that closed the show, the floor-length one in ivory silk with a crossed bodice was strongest. Its gold-encrusted racerback gave it a sexy athleticism that characterizes the best of Melgoza's designs.
—Alison Baenen

Luisa Beccaria

The setting wasn't lacking in drama. Luisa Beccaria held her show in the grand Maria Teresa Hall of the Braidense National Library at the Brera Museum, and for musical accompaniment she hired Passionata, a British opera quartet who sang and emoted like divas. That's a lot for this dress-centric collection to live up to. Did it? Well, the lineup was overlong and suffered at times from heavy-handed styling (knee-highs, ankle socks, and Mary Janes spell overkill in anyone's book). But in the end, yes, the collection was wide-ranging enough to please all of Beccaria's constituencies, from Hollywood types to longtime fans of her girly frocks.

For the actresses, there were a number of red-carpet contenders: a navy and black sweetheart strapless taffeta gown, a red charmeuse siren column, and a dusty rose chiffon floor-grazer with ruched skirt and rosettes embellishing the bodice. For those whose lives don't revolve around awards shows, there were other options: The sweater dresses had a sweet charm, as did a few party numbers embroidered with scallops of frilly tulle. The designer also diversified a bit, layering cozy wrap cardigans over a lot of her dresses, and adding some tailoring to the mix. Feminine tailoring, that is. Where Beccaria goes, ruffles are never far behind.
—Nicole Phelps

Lutz & Patmos

Giving back has become more and more important at Lutz & Patmos.

Over the years, Tina Lutz and Marcia Patmos have asked celebrities—ranging from Kirsten Dunst all the way to Desmond Tutu—to create a special piece to benefit a charity of the guest designer's choice. This season, in honor of the label's tenth anniversary, they brought back six reeditions (including cashmeres by Christy Turlington Burns and Sofia Coppola). But it wasn't all about well-known names. One of the duo's cozy coat-cardigan hybrids was knit in Uruguay through an ongoing collaboration with the Fair Made artisans' group; the free-range sheep and alpaca grazed on native grasses, and the wool was colored with nontoxic dye. Another standout piece, a fringed charcoal vest, was handmade with a traditional macramé technique by indigenous Bolivian women; both practical and plucky, it was the type of item that makes getting dressed to face the winter less of a drag.

There were plenty of year-round staples, too. Subtly color-blocked silk tees and tanks in olive, navy, and bright peacock were perfect for layering, and reversible to boot. Bird-wing patterns spotted in a 1959 edition of A Field Guide to the Birds were echoed on a sheer intarsia sweater with geometric insets of metallic yarn. Wear it with a pair of the rabbit-fur arm warmers, in lovely mottled shades of ash and mauve, and you might not want winter to end.
—Alison Baenen

Lyn Devon

The shows are just getting under way, but it's a safe bet that clean minimalism will be one of Fall's big stories. That's good news for Lyn Devon, who's been focusing on timeless, well-tailored separates for a while now. Her latest collection featured a cropped leather tee and skinny suede ankle pants—both very of-the-moment pieces—but when paired with, say, a long, belted cashmere vest or a wool sweater tied around the shoulders, the silhouettes evoked classic American sportswear more than the latest trend-driven offering. "This collection is not about anything fussy," the designer explained. "It's very straightforward." A black wool jacket with oversize pockets covered in acid yellow sequins felt unnecessarily busy, but on the whole, Devon's sharp designs should resonate well with buyers this season.
—Romney Leader

Maison Martin Margiela

Martin Margiela may have irrevocably left the Maison, but at least he can rest easy about what they're doing in the house with his name on it. Last season, to the mortification of all who've loved the label, it was as if the studio had been overrun by a bunch of rudderless assistants who got the wrong end of the stick about Margiela's brand of conceptualism. Maybe they'd been traumatized by the internal changes. Now, however, despair among the disappointed faithful has lifted. What appeared on the runway is satisfactorily back on track for Fall.

It's the twisting and exaggeration of the classic canon of dressing that has always made Margiela attractive. This season, that knack resurfaced just in time to rejoin the general fashion agenda as it searches for excitement in the design of coats; the look of tailored pants and knits; and the ongoing tussle over whether a skirt should be long, short, or, there again, neither.

The Margiela overcoat has a new sleeve, widely curved backward in a flattish, geometric way that, after several reiterations in beige leather, red wool, and a gray peacoat, looked groundbreaking and desirable. The contribution to pant design is more experimental. In one instance, it's only an illusion—tailored at the front, tights at the back—but in the other, wide-legged and elegantly cut from menswear fabric, it's almost the most accomplished shape of the season. Take away the wide, stiff, padded waistline (and let's hope they do, when it's delivered at retail), and it could be another in the long tradition of killer pieces that made Margiela such an under-the-radar commercial success among the cognoscenti.

They'll also be making a beeline for the beige or gray turtleneck sweaters: Something about the slightly loose rumple in the neck is perfectly judged for now. Or, while there, they may hover over the idea of investing in a latex T-shirt or pencil skirt (sounds mad, but it has the whiff of the kind of Margiela notion destined to become normalized later down the line). As for the skirts? They were worn either as knee-length pencils trailing sheer panels behind, or as longer chiffon transparencies, a compromise between leg-show and breaking the tedious habit of short and tight.

There was a lot more in this show—the use of velvet, color, and the funny furry headpieces with giant earflaps, for starters—that is certain to be pored over, assimilated, and regurgitated in more accessible ways by others. That in itself potentially puts Maison Martin Margiela back in a position of intellectual leadership, where it belongs. But far more important is the fact that this collection has clicked back into line with what its frustrated, grown-up fan base wants to own right now.
—Sarah Mower

Malandrino

Catherine Malandrino's Fall collection picked up where her Spring Nomads show left off. Named Khan and inspired by an image of the Earth as seen from above, it was a densely layered, richly textured melting pot of influences. In the mix were a Belle Époque-ish black velvet cocoon coat with echoes of Paul Poiret; Ali Baba pants in linen or nubbly tweed; draped chiffon dresses in abstracted zebra motifs; leopard-print furs; and somewhere in the middle, a bon chic, bon genre oversize cashmere sweater and cuffed full-leg trousers. The show was also long on the kind of crafty details that the French-born New Yorker has made the calling card of her designer-priced Malandrino label. Among all the fringing and embroideries, there were scads of leather either laser-cut into racy strips and feminine eyelet or stamped with graffiti hieroglyphs.

At times, you could get the feeling that you were on a Sunday afternoon stroll through a tribal costume exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History. That's a dangerously literal path for a designer to follow, but Malandrino was unabashed: She said she was thinking about our communal ancestors and our modern nomadic life. In any case, take the looks apart and there were plenty of timely, sellable pieces here.
—Nicole Phelps

Manish Arora

The show notes name-checked Art Deco, but Bollywood-meets-Blade Runner might've been a more apt description of Manish Arora's more-is-more show (which was held, rather ironically, in a dusty but not unimpressive old library in the historic Lycée Henri IV). "Bollywood" because nearly every piece was embroidered with crystals or beads (some of the subtlest and best in the geometric patterns synonymous with Deco), and Blade Runner because of the sci-fi warrior shapes of the shoulders…and let's not forget the LED headdresses, like earphones tuned to a frequency from deep space, with which the final three models accessorized their fluorescent Louise Brooks bobs.

There were some potential crossover hits, including a 1920's-ish sack dress with gray sequins above the drop waist and below it a starburst of hot pink embroidery; a vibrant stained-glass tee and matching jodhpurs; and a structured dress with embroidery tracing the neon-lights pattern of its fabric. But Arora is most definitely on his own trip.
—Nicole Phelps

Marc by Marc Jacobs

Whoever does Marc Jacobs' research for him is a genius, with an ability to nail a mood that is pure gold. The new Marc by Marc Jacobs collection perfectly captured the moment when stylish boys and girls were picking up Iron Curtain army surplus after the Wall came down. The khaki melton coat with the red trim? The black fur hat? The big wool coat, patched and roughly belted as a dress? It was all spookily close to the source, which was kind of in keeping with the theme of Jacobs' signature show on Monday night: There's no place like home. In that case, "home" was a serene, almost dreamlike reminder of timelessness and enduring value. Here, it was a distillation of the thrift-shop spirit that has shaped the Marc by Marc collection from day one. Not just the surplus, but a strapless tartan prom dress (with petticoat) for the girls and washed-out black felt cargo pants with matching jacket for the boys.

It could seem a little listless, except that everything about Marc Jacobs is a package, so the soundtrack was a relentlessly upbeat modern surf sound (the Drums were featured). That shoved the energy levels skyward and underscored Marc by Marc's fundamental charm and prettiness, both assets clearly highlighted by the fresh-faced and bed-headed cast of models. The pie-crust frilling on blouses and pants might have been a little obvious, but a blanket-striped sweater dress over leggings was girlishly cute. And the military references were artfully tweaked: Freja Beja Erichsen in a little-drummer-boy jacket, Cole Mohr in a big black trench worn over long johns—all reasons to like this collection more and more each season.
—Tim Blanks

Marchesa

There will be lace. And sculpted organza, floaty feathers, beading, and draped tulle. For a few seasons now, queen of the red carpet Georgina Chapman has refined Marchesa's signatures to a flawlessly executed fine point. That's not to say that the label remains at a standstill, however. Fall was inspired by the performer and courtesan Lola Montez and her travels and quest for love, Chapman said. Compared with last season's occasionally stiff references to Madame Butterfly, there was a welcome sense of whimsy, with a feeling of girlish romance in shooting-star embroideries as well as in a dress in cotton-candy tulle, its puff shaped only by a length of black grosgrain ribbon. There were snaking ruffles that appeared to be crafted from very expensive rickrack, and a sleek tuxedo coat that had a circus ringleader's swagger. (Though the real Montez never joined the circus; that was only her celluloid counterpart.)

There are always moments at this presentation that induce a sharp intake of breath. Today it was the appearance of a silver siren gown. The lace-patterned beading on the bodice turned into allover beading and looked like liquid metal. A Fall collection for any creator of eveningwear is inevitably higher-stakes than Spring, coinciding as it does with awards season—all those stars, or their stylists, looking to snag something directly from the runway. Does Chapman keep that in mind when designing? "Yes, yes," she said. "It would be silly not to." It would be sillier still if we don't see at least a couple of these pieces—perhaps a gorgeous paisley beaded fuchsia suede dress or a white feathered Empire gown—on a talented ingenue in the near future.
—Meenal Mistry

Marc Jacobs

Just last week, Marc Jacobs president and recent Twitter convert Robert Duffy tweeted a request for set ideas for the label's Fall show. That apparently spurred Jacobs himself into action, and he more than rose to the challenge: As the show began, spotlights picked out the designer and Duffy tearing the brown construction paper from a wood frame structure at the back of the Armory. The paper duly removed, all 56 models were revealed, standing in formation on the raised platform and staring back at the audience.

With "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" ringing out from Frederic Sanchez's soundtrack, the first girl took to the runway in a gray sweatshirt with a crisscrossed back; full, tweedy gray culottes; ankle socks; and pointy-toe, low-heel croc pumps—for Jacobs watchers, all items more likely to provoke a somehow affecting sense of déjà vu than the shock of the new. From there, the designer riffed on many different elements of his nearly two-decade repertoire, playing with proportions, changing the buttons, but never deviating from a sweetly romantic palette of soft neutrals and pale pastels.

There were, in no particular order, trompe l'oeil bows, sequin-front/knit-back sweaters, sheer lingerie layers, sumptuous Mongolian lamb-collared shearlings, clear plastic trenches, panne velvet dresses, a Prince of Wales check three-piece suit, echoes of his Japanese idols, and vaguely seventies-ish knit dresses. Adding to the familiarity, insiders could even recognize Camille Bidault-Waddington and Susanne Deeken, "real girls" who work on the Marc by Marc Jacobs collection, amid the parade of largely unknown models.

As dreamy and serene as any Jacobs show in recent memory—and how typical of him to intuit that the world is craving serenity right now—the show played like a nostalgia trip, one so lovely it was quite easy to be seduced. "It's refreshing to see something that isn't trying so hard to be new," Jacobs, subversive as ever, said after the show. "There's so much striving for newness now that newness feels less new."

Cynics might argue that he took the easy way out this season. Let them; Jacobs would probably argue right back. These clothes are money in the bank not because they're "safe," but on account of their built-in resonances for the house's many followers, Twitter and otherwise, around the world. For all our technological advances, it's the emotional connection that makes the sale these days.
—Nicole Phelps

Marco de Vincenzo

The pressure was on for newcomer Marco de Vincenzo, who put on his second-ever Milan show in front of an impressive array of international editors this morning. It was perhaps a sign of inexperience that the collection went off in several unrelated directions, from jackets and long split skirts made from somewhat fusty landscape fabrics to drapey panne velvet embroidered with stars for evening. That kept it from being a complete success, but there were a couple of subthemes that showed potential. First were the sporty gray cashmere jackets—the best one was on the snugger side and came belted over narrow, tapering pants. Even more promising were the designer's slim, collarless white coats with curving splices on the front and back that resembled the f-holes of a violin. If de Vincenzo is looking for a focus for next season, he would be smart to zero in on his accomplished, feminine tailoring.
—Nicole Phelps

Marios Schwab

Projecting himself into a new idiom for Halston in New York got Marios Schwab thinking more about his own half-Austrian identity for the collection he shows in his adopted London. "I was the only boy in the sewing school in the Annahof Schule in Salzburg! I had this kind of nostalgia for the ladies who taught me, and who dressed in traditional dirndls on a Sunday. It made me think about working on décolletés," he said backstage. "Oh, and the Steiff teddy bears I had as a kid."

It was hardly The Sound of Music, but with its buttoned-up collarless white blouses under swooping necklines, you could literally see where Schwab was coming from. Most of the looks had long sleeves, with only the legs kept exposed, and all detail was concentrated above a raised waist: bolero jackets, bodices crisscrossed with lacing, and steel clips transposed from the desginer's favorite pair of climbing boots.

If it didn't quite have the impact of Schwab's first contributions to shaping the body-con movement four years ago, it showed he's keeping a grip on designing the kind of pieces retailers ask him for. And the teddy-fur coat? Several of those have been popping up in avant-garde collections this Fall, so he's dead-on with that.
—Sarah Mower

Mark Fast

For a softly spoken Canadian knitter from the forest fringes of Winnipeg, Mark Fast has certainly made a lot of headway. Since last season's show, he's become a champion of size-inclusive modeling—a stroke that made him headlines the world over—and launched a second line of stretchy underwear and body dresses named Faster. So far, so impressive, but such is the voracious speed of information absorption that Fast was in the position of having to pull off something extra for Fall.

Was it there? In part. He opened with a flowing, nut-brown silken poncho dress and a cranberry suede gored skirt and jacket that announced that he's aware more needs to be added to his short, tight, stretchy repertoire. Waterfall scarf trails and flippy skirts in viscose knits recurred here and there, but mostly he kept to his tried and tested device of matte, elastic open-stitch cobwebby knits, engineered to cling to everything you've got.

There's no doubt Fast should be applauded for continuing to use plus-size models. Carrying that through for a second time not only showed integrity but made it look almost normal practice—or at least not as novel as it did at first. Still, now that he's set himself the admirable goal of making everyone feel great about her shape, Fast has a way to go to see it through. There were glitches in the underpinnings and kinks and creases in the fabrication that (literally) needed to be smoothed out in this collection for it to seem 100 percent gorgeously convincing for all.
—Sarah Mower

Marni

Unless you are a fully committed follower of Consuelo Castiglioni's studied eccentricity, the art of wearing Marni has to be subtraction. It's a fact evident amongst the crowd shuffling into the early morning show, checking out each other's clothes (the usual tribal preliminary at every gathering). Here is proof that a striking piece of shearling, a knit with a singular color, a fur accessory, and so on can be proudly carried off by chic women whose personal style has nothing to do with the full-time Marni freaks.

This season, the subtractors might have to work a little harder. As total looks, this collection had some wacky ideas: big, jazzy seventies upholstery-type patterns smothered all over suits and matching bags; tops with 3-D stand-out peplums over bulky skirts; and Bermudas, Bermudas all the way, even one pair with bias flares at the knees. Still, for the gimlet-eyed shopper, there were, as always, gems to be smuggled out of this collection, the kind she can wear in the safe knowledge that they're not going to add 15 pounds and a slight look of the unhinged to her appearance. Two skirts in aqua wool, one cut in a circle and the other with a flirtatious flip in the back; the perforated leather boots; and the richly pailletted tops, as well as the fur-front vests—these could all be effectively deployed to perk up a normal wardrobe.

There's no doubt that the Marni sense of color is exceptional—and a big part of the attraction, as it makes for favorite pieces with a long life. This time, Castiglioni's palette—brown (the shade of milk chocolate) and ocher, dusty pink and oxblood red, and that zinging bright turquoise green—was, as always, beautiful and artistically chosen.
—Sarah Mower

Martin Grant

Australian designer Martin Grant has made a modest but steady name for himself, proving that stylish and practical need not be separate entities when it comes to women's fashion. His very consistent collections have always been quietly chic and eminently wearable, and this show displayed his USP nicely. It also demonstrated, though, why he would be best advised to stay within those restrained but effective parameters.

Shown as a presentation in the gorgeous École des Beaux-Arts, the collection began with a dress that was a good example of Grant's modus operandi, being a seemingly simple mid-length black dress with demi sleeves. But look a little closer (and this is one reason why the designer has been wise in rejecting shows for presentations in the past year, as they allow onlookers to appreciate his careful handiwork better), and his skills are more apparent. Witness how he cut the bottom of the dress to blossom out into a small bubble, but stitched it in such a way so as not to bulk out the wearer. Similarly, a simple pair of black trousers had an interesting drape effect on the hips, which actually made the model look even more sylphlike. A beautiful oak-colored leather minidress included some pockets carefully cut into the side, lightening up the material's potentially heavy effect.

Aside from detailing, Grant is also known for his ladylike aesthetic and, true to form, the only cleavage on show was on the models' toes, thanks to some particularly beautiful brightly colored round-toed high heels—cut away, rather saucily, just over the models' mid-toe joints. Less appealing, though, was the end section, in which Grant had included the ubiquitous big-shoulder trend—a misguided effort that brought to mind a normally dignified uncle getting down to some hip-hop at his niece's wedding. Grant works better when he sways gently to his own refined tune.
—Hadley Freeman

Mary Katrantzou

Portraits of Madame de Pompadour, the paintings of Fragonard and Nattier—what could the frills and curlicues of the rococo have to do with the digital print revolution? "Yes, it's excessive, and decorative, and I know everyone else is talking about minimalism," shrugged Mary Katrantzou, backstage after her show. "But I knew I needed to go a little outside the stuff I've been doing. And I do like a challenge."

She was referring to the need to feel her way into new silhouettes as well as to find some way of breaking out of the kaleidoscopic swirls and sharp-angled geometric explosions that have characterized the sensational prints coming out of London in the last two or three years. Katrantzou, a print and textile expert, has been at the forefront of inventing a new visual language that has stunned fashion with its novelty—a language Alexander McQueen was also using fluently in his last two shows. Her problem, rightly anticipated, is that novelty quickly becomes cliché—and a cheap T-shirt dress on a market stall. To keep things interesting, Katrantzou knows she has to do something more sophisticated than a placement print on a shift dress.

This time, she merged photographic images of lace, jewels, ormolu, medals, and sashes in ways that vaguely recalled Gianni Versace's more-is-more scarf prints, and she sculpted some of them into shapes that echoed parts of military jackets. Printed vest-jackets, a couple of Napoleonic coats, and a frothy frill-front shirt added bandwidth to her offer, too. Still, the effects, though interesting, seemed slightly stiff and forced until Katrantzou let herself go at the end, sending out a couple of dresses that combined asymmetric bodices, lace patched against print, glints of metallic, and cascades of half-trains trailing off at the side. Somehow, they succeeded in hitting a note of oddness that seemed new.
—Sarah Mower

Matthew Ames

Challenging himself to create a wardrobe of "interchangeable pieces," Matthew Ames took classic shapes—jackets, pants, shirts—and "really stripped them down and cleansed them," he explained. The show was a subdued and mellow affair, too, compared to most runway to-dos with their pop soundtracks. Unfortunately, the cleanliness of the surroundings felt sterile; there was an energy missing that would have brought to life those pieces that were truly beautiful.

Among the things of beauty were Ames' leather coats and jackets. Especially appealing were the soft, supple camel-colored toppers with big, enveloping hoods—a great alternative to a motorcycle jacket. Other cold-weather pieces benefited from outsize proportions. A coat of quilted cream cashmere engulfed the wearer like a gorgeous blanket.

When it came to the trousers, the excess of fabric was a bit too reminiscent of the harem trend that blessedly died out a few seasons ago. Ames' willingness to take a partisan stand on shape is admirable, but it might've worked better if he'd experimented with pleats or stretch instead; there are other ways to push pants forward than to make women look incredibly hippy.

Some of Ames' best pieces came in muted pastel shades. There was an androgynous undercurrent to the entire collection, and the use of a more feminine palette differentiated it from early-nineties minimalism. Sweet and strong miniskirts came in pink cashmere and pink leather, while a knee-length lavender dress in silk crepe draped to a coy V in the back.

Ames is clearly a whiz when it comes to tailoring. It will be interesting to watch where he takes his basics next.
—Alison Baenen

Matthew Williamson

Wait a minute, sorry, I was looking for the Matthew Williamson show. This seems to be Jaeger London. What? This is Matthew Williamson? But what about this opening outfit of a tweed short jacket over a matching dress, the one with ruffles going diagonally up the front of the jacket in the manner of an opera scarf worn by women of a certain age the world over? This can't be Williamson, surely.

Well, according to the press release on the seats, it was. And then the second outfit confirmed it: a silk multicolored one-shoulder minidress, worn with white ankle boots and tanned bare legs. Perfect for autumn/winter, of course. Now that's more like the Matthew Williamson we know.

This designer will always be best known, probably to his grudging chagrin, for making bright young things for bright young things. Some seasons he seems content to do what he does well. And some seasons he does not, and instead gets all experimental and mature on his audience. In this collection, he did both, interspersing frankly baffling forays into pleated tweed and heavy, dull coats with sexy silky dresses that will unquestionably look fantastic on the dance floor in Ibiza.

But this is not to say that Williamson should only design for the likes of Olivia Palermo and his perma-muse Sienna Miller, both of whom were in his front row. In fact, he is often very good at designing for older women—inspired, no doubt, by his glorious mother, Maureen, who has been sporting her son's hot pink and turquoise offerings from the very beginning of his career. The best pieces in this collection, in fact, would look great on a grown-up customer. Among them: a long-sleeve silk dress that came out toward the end, with a narrow belted waist; and a pair of sleeveless shift dresses—one in blue, one in silvery tweed—with gently ruffled hems with ribbon piping. These worked precisely because they showed Williamson at his feminine, jewel-colored best. The heavy dresses with embellishment and strange cropped jackets, on the other hand, were as successful as a square peg's attempt to try to force itself into a round hole.
—Hadley Freeman

Maurizio Pecoraro

Maurizio Pecoraro had the dusty pales that have become a theme on the Fall runways. He trotted out a flurry of Mongolian lamb furs. He even did a mannish suit—-a really sharp-looking one, in double-breasted gray flannel with flaring, cuffed trousers. In his own subtle way, this designer usually figures out how to tap into the current mood. Should the international audience have checked back in with him this season (over-scheduled non-Italian editors and buyers tend to skip this show), they would've been quietly pleased by the tailoring Pecoraro put on the catwalk. Examples ranged from the boxy charcoal jacket and straight skirt edged in brown leather that opened the show to a herringbone coat-dress with a doubled lapel.

The issue is that Pecoraro's not really a big statement guy. In addition to his suitings, which felt fresh, he muddled the message by showing a good many of the sequin shift dresses that have become a predictable element of his shows, along with suede flares and fur-embellished knitwear. Without a more precise point of view, he remains one of those overlooked Milan talents whose collection gets squeezed out by the city's manically busy schedule. It won't be easy catching everyone's attention again, but a more focused presentation would be a smart place to start.
—Nicole Phelps

Max Azria

The only thing wrong with Lubov and Max Azria doing luxe minimalism for their Max Azria show is that a reviewer must resist the urge to indulge in some sort of Max-goes-minimal wordplay. Must resist. Other than that, today's show was a beauty, which built on and really refined the clean direction the Azrias started heading in last Spring.

This brand of minimalism was serene and spare, with nothing that was overly stark or challengingly architectural. The tonal looks, either in creamy neutrals or blacks and charcoals, followed in the hybridized fabric vein that seems to be everyone's cup of tea these days. Leathers mixed it up with wools, and there was a peekaboo play in paneled crepe dresses inset with mesh. For a collection that skewed conservative, the latter added a necessary little frisson. Still, the clean and covered-up restraint of a beautiful oatmeal bouclé coat or a chic boxy taupe leather tee and trousers is something we can certainly get behind. Evening too was a subdued affair, mostly. Amid the lovely unembellished and billowing draped jersey frocks were a series of black ribbed-knit dresses with wide panels of bugle beading that strangely echoed the Azrias' other high-end label, Hervé Léger. Those pieces will be an easier sell to this duo's starlet contingent.
—Meenal Mistry

MaxMara

It's winter, and people are talking about pragmatic sportswear for working women, which points toward a bumper opportunity for an established go-out outerwear brand like MaxMara. This season the label strove to capitalize on that heritage—established way back at the dawn of working womanhood—with a collection that focused on eighties swing-coated military silhouettes with a touch of the Dr. Zhivagos about them.

Greatcoats, stand-up collars, rows of buttons on shoulders, and long skirts in navy, gray, khaki, and stone formed the core of the show. These uniformly passed muster with all the evident quality women expect from this house—save, perhaps, for the shearlings. In a season of hot competition on the sheepskin front, these seemed too featureless and bulky to be contenders. Where the presentation really stretched credibility was when the styling delved into wide trousers tucked into leather knee boots, gold cocktail dresses, and heavily embroidered eveningwear with a quasi-czarist theme. That much historicism only served to distract from the strengths of a company whose classic product doesn't need to dress up in fancy disguises to prove its market relevance.
—Sarah Mower

Meadham Kirchhoff

Dark and goth-y? Stuck in their own groove of black and navy deconstructed streetwear? Anyone who thought they had Ed Meadham and Ben Kirchhoff safely categorized were thrown back in their seats, mouths open at the sight of the color, flowered dresses, lace veils, and tinselly embroidery the duo piled into their collection for Fall. This pair clearly has a romantic streak—one that originated when they watched a documentary tracing Romany culture and its links from India through to Spain, which they then mixed up with imagery from Corinne Day's nineties photography and thirties bias-cut Hollywood gowns. "This one came as a total stream of consciousness," said Meadham. "It's eclectic dressing-up-box pretty things, Christmas cracker crowns, painted biker jackets. We just wanted drama. For it to be a visual assault."

The departure divided audience opinion. For all those nonplussed, there were as many amazed by the creativity and risk-taking involved. Not all fashion should look the same, after all—and it often takes outsider designers like Meadham Kirchhoff to defy the predictable with a passion that comes from the heart.
—Sarah Mower

Michael Angel

Australian designer Michael Angel has made a name for himself with striking digital prints, but for Fall, he set out to evolve his signature look. In fact, the first half of his show—which featured draped mohair jackets, alpaca skirts, and a crepe and angora dress—was virtually pattern-free. "I wanted the shape of the garments to stand out here, not the color," Angel explained backstage. The clothes were beautifully constructed, but it was difficult to trace the connection between these sophisticated looks and the parade of printed body-con minidresses that closed the show. What's more, the in-your-face sexiness of the finale frocks felt out of sync with the relaxed mood taking shape on this week's runways. Kemp Muhl was more in touch with the prevailing silhouette, perched goddess-like in the front row wearing a billowy, hooded maxi gown from Angel's Fall 2008 collection. The designer would do well to place next season's effort in a more relevant context.
—Romney Leader

Michael Kors

When he's at the top of his game, Michael Kors is brilliant at conjuring a whole lifestyle in 64 runway looks. The chunky cashmere sweaters, camel suede wrap shirts, distressed leather cargo vests, and floor-skimming sequined jersey gowns the designer showed today stirred up visions of private jets, second homes in the mountains, and very flush bank accounts. If you left the tents not longing for a piece of all that—or, at the very least, not wanting his easy, extravagant shredded silver-fox anorak (the model wore it with the hood up)—then perhaps you'd be happier living in a monastery or commune.

With all-American sportswear a big story on the New York runways this week and the Costume Institute's next show, American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity, opening in May, this was Kors' moment to shine. And shine he did, updating classics like chesterfields and full trousers by cutting them in crushed flannel. Focusing on fit, he put slits in the elbows of a white coat worn with a deep-V sweater so he could keep the arms razor-thin, and he sliced a paillette jersey gown at the midriff for a relaxed, sexy effect.

If it's sexy you want, Kors is your man for Fall. There were tan sternums (on both the guys and the gals) everywhere you looked. The luxe quotient was also plenty high. We've seen a lot of fur trim on coats and even dresses this season, but it doesn't get any better than Kors' shredded fox skirt. It exemplified the combination of indulgence and irreverence that made this collection such a hit.
—Nicole Phelps

Milly

"What's classic is modern," Michelle Smith proclaimed before her Fall show. Some of the city-chic ensembles in crisp red, navy, and green were quite strong—but unfortunately, Smith's simple declarative message was muddled by distracting styling and a too-long lineup.

Strengths included cropped peacoats in double-faced wool and several ladylike wool jacket-and-miniskirt pairings, particularly the one in white with red and blue checks. Smith—who also cited a trio of Godard films as inspiration—clearly counts sixties French fashion under the rubric of "what's classic."

These cute, retro silhouettes were undermined by the addition of acid pink tights, laser-cut berets, and busy plaid pumps. Plenty of standout separates hit the Milly runway today, but it was difficult to appreciate the simplicity of the clothes with everything else that was going on.
—Romney Leader

Missoni

Missoni's latest ad campaign focuses on the family. And designer Angela took a tribe of third-generation Missonis down the catwalk with her today. It was as if she was emphasizing the emotional connection you can make with fashion (Dolce & Gabbana did the same thing at their show). That's also another way of emphasizing the value of the "Made in Italy" marque. Clever.

The show itself was rooted in a more universal tribal spirit. It found common ground among the Celts, the Masai, punks, the kids at Burning Man…clearly a new turn of events for Missoni, but it made sense on the catwalk. A wrap skirt in patchworked Missoni knit could almost be a tartan kilt, especially given the big pins that literally held the collection together. And a big, slouchy blanket coat, also clasped with a pin, could be a Masai warrior's wrap. In fact, the whole idea of "could be" was Angela's impetus. Almost everything we were looking at had the potential to be something else. So all the knit shifts, tent dresses, and crop tops that were shown zipped open up the back were actually the wrong way around. And skirts could be pulled up or down, tops extended or shrunk.

Reversals and reconfigurations are the kind of notions that people more routinely get to grips with on their own (in a changing room, perhaps), which means this collection's user-friendliness was perhaps not as evident on the catwalk as it could have been. There was gorgeous outerwear—a fur-trimmed knit parka, for instance, layered over a skirt and pants (very haute Braveheart)—but much of it was offered with nothing more than clunky black-trimmed bras or bandeaus. Still, that's for show, and ultimately it scarcely distracted from the allure of a duffel-cape hybrid or an open-weave poncho that swirled like Macbeth's cloak.

To return to that family connection: Angela's daughter Margherita Maccapani Missoni carved a niche for herself in the business today with her first accessories collection: bracelets and neck pieces in chromed metal that held the knit tight. They had a techno-tribal edge that seemed entirely appropriate.
—Tim Blanks

Miu Miu

If her Prada collection, with its emphasis on the bust, was a sexual come-on, Miuccia Prada's Miu Miu show was about romance—at least on its pre-Summer of Love sixties surface. The narrow, short silhouette made an erogenous zone of twiggy legs elongated by square-toed pumps. Sleeveless shifts came with high, chin-scraping collars, some accented with thin, floppy bows; other dresses blossomed below the waist and were cinched with large turnkey closures (the better to preserve the innocence of the girls who wore them, perhaps). An abundance of silver rosettes dotting the front and circling the hem of coats added to the sweet Mary Quant-ish vibe.

But this wouldn't be a Miu Miu show without a little—or a lot of—provocation. Pinafore dresses with plunging U-fronts were worn with bandeaux that exposed the flesh under the breasts; shifts had cutouts at the ribs; and miniskirts flipped up suggestively at the outer thighs. All of this was done in fabrics that had an odd, incongruous solidity.

The linear, Edie Sedgwick, pre-hippie sixties have been popping up with increasing frequency as the Fall season comes to a close. This collection put Prada squarely in the center of things, but, as usual, with her signature perverse twist.
—Nicole Phelps

Monique Lhuillier

There was not a trouser to be seen at Monique Lhuillier's impressive show. Dress after dress marched out at such a rapid-fire pace it was hard to clock the detailing on one before another took its place. Working an Asian-warrior theme, Lhuillier's red-carpet soldiers were dressed to kill.

Short, embellished looks came out first. Dragon-printed, lacquered matelassé worked on a long-sleeved, high-necked mini with gold-garnished cuffs. The same print on a cheongsam-ish trench looked too "dragon lady"—but, for the most part, Lhuillier avoided any triteness in a theme that could easily have been interpreted as a cliché. Mostly this was due to the freshness of her leggy silhouettes. Yes, these were all very-special-occasion dresses, but the best were lightened up by their glam embellishments, not dragged down. A halter in blood red dripped with gold leather chain embroidery; the model looked like she was in a very beautiful, flower-festooned cage. A few shredded-wool coats could have been skipped. (They potentially could have made a nice contrast with all the glossy dresses, but instead they just looked hairy.) Once the long dresses appeared, it was hard not to think Oscar—as in Hollywood, not de la Renta. A silk jersey column in deep plum would look perfect on Julianne Moore, while the strapless burgundy gown with a sweetheart neckline—made from hundreds of hand-stitched swaths of organza—would go very well with a gold statuette.
—Alison Baenen

Moschino

Black cowboy hat, dark shades, big gold hoop earrings, and a black strapless bustier dress with a voluptuous spill of ruffles for a skirt. From the first outfit you knew that Moschino's Rosella Jardini wasn't interested in pursuing the new subtlety that's been sweeping through fashion. Those earrings turned up as embroideries on a strapless dress and as the trim on a little Chanel-esque skirtsuit, not to mention as a print on a silk blouse. And that was just the beginning. There was also long leather fringe, huge grommets, gold sequins, leopard spots, and Elizabethan ruffs turned into miniskirts. As for the chapeaux and sunglasses, every model without exception wore them.

Just what a simple black dress with slightly puffed shoulders was doing in Jardini's exuberant lineup wasn't clear, but it did offer a moment's pause before she sent out a caution-orange blazer cinched with a hot pink corset. To be fair, there were some charming looks here, including a leopard-print sleeveless shift layered over a black turtleneck and an easy tent dress with delicate lace insets, as well as a trench in putty and chocolate brown—a seemingly conservative piece, until you saw the cowboy fringe in the back. Those were all things you could imagine hanging in a store; it's just that on the runway they were overshadowed by much of the rest.
—Nicole Phelps

Moschino Cheap And Chic

To celebrate the opening of Maison Moschino, the company's new hotel in Milan's Viale Monte Grappa, Rosella Jardini and her Cheap & Chic team changed up their show format, flying in British pop sensation Pixie Lott to perform and enlisting Italian actress Asia Argento to deejay. Instead of sitting in orderly rows, guests swigged Champagne and stood cheek by jowl in a clear plastic tent as models streamed past them. The concept, as the designer described it afterward, was "all of the different women who come out of the hotel." There was a "Chanel lady" in a bright pink tweed bouclé jacket and skirt, and an "Hermès lady" with a black Kelly bag perched upside down on her head. With Carla Sozzani's famous 10 Corso Como store just steps from the hotel, Jardini sent out "shopaholics" carrying shopping bags with "Full" printed on one side and the Moschino URL on the other. Those were just for show, but the designer did debut a new collection of luggage, dubbed "Lost and Found." There were even maids in black and white uniforms who playfully swatted the people lining their way with feather dusters.

In other words, this was trademark Cheap & Chic: nothing too serious, full of fashion in-jokes, and contagiously upbeat. To wit: The last model out sashayed by in a spangled shift dress with big block letters that read: "Fashion must go on!" Just in case it doesn't, though, it was a clever move for Jardini and co. to branch out with this new hotel.
—Nicole Phelps

Mulberry

Creative director Emma Hill's eclectic inspirations, according to the program notes, included Valley of the Dolls, naughty English royalty, Hollywood theatricals, and over-the-top animal prints. Most of this could be intuited from the setting alone: It featured trippy pink-spotted walls; gold beaded curtains; giant, glitter-covered panthers; and a techno take on tunes from The Jungle Book.

Silhouettes switched off between puffy-shouldered, ladylike suits (in electric blue silk or black wool shot through with tinsel) and a three-quarter-sleeve shift that practically screamed "Alexa Chung." In fact, the influence of the former MTV host and unofficial brand ambassador could be felt throughout: T-bar ballerina flats in leopard and studded black, collared silk blouses buttoned up all the way, and, of course, new versions of the Alexa bag. Of the leather goods that debuted, the strongest was the chain-strapped Edna, which came in taupe shoulder bag and tomato red drawstring variations.

Although the clothes were cute and fun, this show was really all about the loads of chic accessories—that, and the delightful showmanship.
—Romney Leader

Naeem Khan

When it comes to style, Michelle Obama has the Midas touch. Last November, the First Lady wore a silver Naeem Khan column to the White House's state dinner for India. "It's completely changed my life," Khan said after his show. "People know me at the grocery store. My stuff is selling at 80, 90 percent sell-throughs."

On the runway, he worked his own Midas touch in a strong show that crossed his gilded, disco-ball glamour with a hint of love, sex, and rock 'n' roll. It's not an easy mix to brew, but Khan mostly made it work with motorcycle vests and jackets, now beaded or in brocade, over long jersey dresses and feathered skirts. Another kind of topper was equally important here: the opulently beaded, fur-trimmed vest, an evening powerhouse that Khan has made a go-to staple.

As adept as he is at embellishment, it's not hard for this designer to go overboard. There is a very fine line when it comes to beads, brocades, et al. A shift embroidered all over with gold mirror-work was très chic, while another strung with gold fringed beading was decidedly less so. Still, when he came up for air, Khan proved he was worthy of his household-name status.
—Meenal Mistry

Nanette Lepore

In the contemporary market, a designer's strength is measured by an ability to distill the season's key trends into something the customer will want to buy. That sounds obvious, but it's not always easy to pull off. With her latest effort, Nanette Lepore was solidly on the mark. "I looked at a Renaissance portrait and bumped up the colors," she said backstage, casually explaining her Fall inspiration. What distinguished this from any number of other "romantic" collections? Military detailing and prodigious use of velvet—two big motifs this week. A sturdy wool coat benefited from the addition of cargo pockets, an olive anorak was cut in silk and velvet, and a series of colorful draped velvet gowns closed the show. Lepore was heavy-handed with frills at times—an explosion of ruffles weighed down another wool topper—but buyers looking for price-friendly variations on Fall's top looks will find much to choose from here.
—Romney Leader

Narciso Rodriguez

When Julianna Margulies picked up awards at both the Golden Globes and the SAGs earlier this year, she looked every inch a winner in a pair of Narciso Rodriguez gowns. Clearly, this designer can do red-carpet sizzle with the best of them, but as it turned out, that isn't where his head was at for Fall. Inspired by what he described in rather cerebral terms as "beautiful curved lines and shadows," he sent out dramatic coats and eye-grabbing, short, color-blocked and ombré dresses. If the concept was brainy, the execution was never boring.

The curved lines Rodriguez spoke of backstage came into play in a number of ways: as a circular silk mikado inset on the front of his show-opening wool twill coat, or in the graceful lines of a bell-shaped black shearling. Dresses came with doubled asymmetrical bodices in contrasting colors, or they were paired with cropped jackets studded with nail heads, exposing flashes of collarbone or rib.

As for those shadows, they made a subtle appearance on a wool/angora coat that shaded barely perceptibly from chalk white to gray to green. They also surfaced more aggressively on a fantastic zip-front dress that swirled from brick red through gray. In a season heavy on black and relatively light on uplift, these clothes will stand out on the racks. This was about as maximal as this minimalist gets, and for Rodriguez the result was a strong, finely balanced collection.
—Nicole Phelps

Nathan Jenden

For the first collection of his Life After DVF (she was front-row center, in the show of support that typified their relationship), Nathan Jenden imagined "church ladies in the jungle." From the first zebra print to the last tulle ruffle, he constructed a vision of zingy, hyper-colored optimism. The key word is "constructed"—there was an over-the-top forties flavor to the tailoring of the jackets and pencil skirts with their flaring kick pleats (the saucer hats helped, too). It followed the silhouette of his equally upbeat Spring collection so closely, you could assume Jenden has settled on a design signature. It clearly doesn't involve "simple": A gray jersey dress was wrapped in a nude ruffle; a plain black jacket sported a leopard lapel. But it does involve lots of eye-popping color. Was that pink party skirt made of shredded feathers or strips of something synthetic? A one-shouldered dress composed of hot pink tiers looked like a great big cake. Another dress could have been made of crumpled metallic candy wrappers. But the sweetness wasn't sickly—for that, credit Jenden's contagious excitement about his future. "This is me," he bubbled backstage in his McQueen tee and little black waistcoat.
—Tim Blanks

Neil Barrett

"It's the first time I've made girls sexy," said Neil Barrett as he steered visitors around his installation in a Left Bank gallery. What he meant was that his collection of womenswear was no longer a straight gender-bending crossover from his men's collection. Barrett used the same hybrid theme as his men's show, but a peacoat front attached to a biker jacket back actually seemed like a more workable proposition for women because of his mastery of shape. Likewise the tube skirt with the peacoat upper half. Barrett is a true believer in black and white monochrome, but he's equally convinced that it is only leather that can make monochrome come alive, so the collection made full use of skins. There was a half-leather, half-melton coat; an oversize leather tee that could do double duty as a dress; and leather pants backed with jersey, which were, Barrett said, the consummate combination of texture and tightness. (The versions in stretch python came a very close second.) The designer's love of a second-skin fit means his womenswear isn't kind. That is simply a reflection of the punk crucible in which Barrett's aesthetic was formed: His tees with the Nick Cave graphic certainly testified to his affection for the bad old days. But there were still some exceptional pieces—like the sleeveless shearling gilet or the washed-leather biker jacket with a luxuriantly quilted lining—that offered enticement to those who aren't as wand-slender as Barrett himself.
—Tim Blanks

Nicolas Andreas Taralis

With his expertly cut suits and cooler-than-thou jeans, Nicolas Andreas Taralis showed signs of filling a void left by Helmut Lang in the middle aughts. But then in 2007, Taralis himself appeared to drop out of the scene, concentrating his energies on a short-lived position at Cerruti. He never entirely stopped designing or producing under his own steam, though, and now, with tailoring resurgent on other runways, he's chosen a smart time to re-emerge on a broader stage. "I'm picking up the pieces where I left off," he said backstage. "It's a little more artisanal and handmade, a little less tough."

More artisanal, yes. Taralis showed a couple of biker jackets in quilted washed and distressed leather. Less tough? Not from where we were sitting. That's hardly a complaint, though: His jackets still look great, cut lean and a bit meaner than in the past thanks to a bold, slightly peaked, and of-the-moment shoulder. The fit looks right on his slim trousers, too. As for the denim, it can be hard to justify a spot for jeans on a runway, but the designer gave them a reason for being there by adding edgy industrial zippers that snaked up the legs. Now might still be a difficult time to get a young business up and running, but from the looks of the editors and retailers lining up to greet Taralis after the show, many people were happy to be rediscovering him.
—Nicole Phelps

Nicole Farhi

Sometimes, Nicole Farhi surrenders to the summery South of France, where she grew up. That's when her clothes get all floaty, feminine, and indistinct. At other times, the heart of a soixante-huitarde, a radical chick caught up in the intellectual ferment of Paris in the 1960's, beats in her breast. Fortunately, this was one of those moments, because it meant her Fall collection came on strong from the instant a sleeveless coat in black patent—worn layered over another coat, this one in black wool—marched out onto her catwalk. The look was completed by leggings and patent booties. Next, Farhi offered a camel jacket, sleeves to the elbow, with a box-pleated patent and cashmere skirt. The combination of sheen and softness—part maîtresse, part petit bourgeois—was odd but appealing. And the designer maintained the dialogue for a while, with a coat in that patent/cashmere combo (like an upscale flasher's mac), followed by a wrap coat in camel. A funnel-necked sack dress in dully gleaming black cloque kept the dressy fetish mood aloft.

Then Farhi let a little Rei of moonshine into her collection, veering off into echoes of Kawakubo's avant-garderie. That explained the asymmetrical draping and bias cutting, which created strange volumes. The designer said she was looking for sculptural effects in her clothes (Frank Gehry's name came up), so there was clearly some rigorous thought at work. And it did pay off in the most rigorous pieces: a sleeveless dress in black macramé that begged to be worn at a brainiac cocktail party, another dress with the controlled chaos of black fringing going every which way. Farhi's clothes have never made a point of being glamorous, but here, she was truly mistress of her own brand of severe chic. The beaded tulle shift that closed the show glittered like dark stars.
—Tim Blanks

Nicole Miller

Nicole Miller went for a harder edge this season, and her models, kitted out in knit skullcaps and bunched-up legwarmers, appeared ready to take on the New York streets. Cityscapes popped up on prints, and dresses came short, dark, and ruched. The main focus, though, was on coats. Biker jackets were done in leather and wool; a resin-coated trench fell on the cheap side of shiny.

The best looks were layered. One all-black outfit was especially appealing: a chiffon tunic tucked under a body-wrapping cashmere hoodie and a silk and wool jacket, worn with a pair of skinny scuba pants. It was the type of chic, I'm-not-trying outfit off-duty models always seem to nail, and Miller dished it out in several cool variations.
—Alison Baenen

Nina Ricci

Effectively, this Fall is Peter Copping's debut as a full-fledged runway designer after spending a decade as Marc Jacobs' right-hand man at Louis Vuitton. Though he's been at Nina Ricci since last spring, this collection was the first to be given an official on-schedule show since Olivier Theyskens left the house. What Copping showed certainly demonstrated a distinct departure from Theyskens' high-drama, dark Belgian romance. At first sight, Copping's take on Nina Ricci is much more flowery and safely feminine, full of pretty, just below knee-length satin slipdresses; 3-D haberdashery floral appliqués; and hints of the Belle Époque in bustle-back skirts.

That part of the collection, as well as the four long finale dresses, seemed to be positioning Nina Ricci as the Parisian answer to, say, Alberta Ferretti or Collette Dinnigan. That's a respectable thing to be aiming for commercially, but looked at from the creative angle, Copping still has to assert himself as a designer with his own voice. A lot that was on the runway looked too much like holdovers from his days at Vuitton, where Marc Jacobs handed him sole authorship of cruise and pre-collections. Still, new house, new start; and by next season, maybe the distance will have given Copping the chance to whip up a new raison d'être for the Ricci label.
—Sarah Mower

No. 21

After losing the rights to his name and taking the Spring season off, Alessandro Dell'Acqua was back on the runway today with a new label and a somewhat new approach. He's named the collection No. 21 after his lucky number (his birthday is December 21), and as he said backstage, "It's about real women." Or to put it another way? "There's more daywear." Dell'Acqua's focus on masculine staples like crisp blue cotton poplin shirts, boxy knits, and camel trousers puts him in step with the general direction fashion is heading in—a smart move in these more practical times.

But the designer didn't entirely forsake his louche side. The shift dress that opened the show, for instance, was practically staid coming; going, however, it was a different story, with a plunging rear view and ruched zipper. The lingerie details he loves turned up in the form of cool, understated lace tees and tanks, and above-the-knee skirts. And for evening, he was embellishing peekaboo chiffon in a gorgeous shade of emerald green with feather trim in the back.

It's going to take some time for Dell'Acqua to build this new image as a go-to guy for sportswear, but a classic leopard-print ponyhair coat made modern via its neoprene bonded leather trim and a pair of sexy fitted leather motorcycle jackets look like good starting points.
—Nicole Phelps

Ohne Titel

A few days ago, Flora Gill gleefully pronounced Ohne Titel's Fall collection its most wearable ever. With equal enthusiasm, she discussed her attempts, with co-designer Alexa Adams, to keep prices down and clientele growing.

OK, so it's not exactly the sexiest subject matter for an interview… but when young talents make a real effort to reconcile art and commerce, positive things can happen.

Today's show, which the designers said was a millennial spin on Edwardian military motifs, was undeniably retail-friendly. There were beautiful leather jackets inset with ribbed-knit panels; cropped shearlings; soldier coats; and three kinds of pants (knit-and-leather leggings to match the jackets, slouchy harem jodhpurs, and refreshing wide-leg trousers). As usual, Gill and Adams offered plenty of directional ideas, but this time they were more fully integrated into the whole. Take, for example, the original knitted mesh they developed as a modern, graphic take on lace: It was used throughout, pieced into dresses and skirts, and cut into leggings that will surely become must-haves among the Ohne Titel obsessives who've adored the brand since day one.

Our sole quibble was with the slightly shopworn theme of moody military chic. Customers may not have tired of it yet, but fashion editors surely have. Still, this luxurious and polished effort proved that Ohne Titel's savvy new strategy is working; maybe next season it will crystallize in even purer form.
—Meenal Mistry

Organic by John Patrick

John Patrick loves a bit of atmosphere—his last two presentations took place at a 124-year-old steak house and in a church basement, respectively. Why, then, were guests squeezed into a tiny, windowless cement space this season? "There's no artifice here," Patrick explained. "No theatrics. I want the focus to be on the clothes." Not a bad idea, as the designer's latest effort—"a Joni Mitchell-slash-Sloane Ranger thing," as he put it—was among his strongest to date. Patrick worked with the Harris Tweed mills to turn out colorful plaid blazers; cropped, flared trousers; and high-waisted shorts. Hip-hugging leather pants paired with a chambray men's shirt added a rocker vibe, while sweet printed chiffon tea dresses kept it all balanced. As always, everything was produced using sustainable methods. The fine level of craftsmanship evident in the clothes makes you wonder why more designers don't follow suit.
—Romney Leader

Oscar de la Renta

Oscar de la Renta hasn't let the Great Recession get him down. His outlook and his collections have remained as vibrant as ever, but his latest effort was his most gilded and audacious in a while (intriguingly, not unlike that of his compatriot in style Carolina Herrera). Channeling the eighties with big, feathered 'dos and glossy makeup, his models wore day looks in lush fabrics and bold colors, like a cinnamon alpaca coat with an orchid alpaca collar or a pumpkin floral long-sleeve silk mikado dress. And how's this for rich: a silk-faille dress and jacket, a cashmere scarf twisted around the model's head, and an umbrella, all rendered in digital astrakhan print? De la Renta hardly skimped on embroideries, either, decorating the hems of long, straight skirts with tilelike mosaics of fabric above a ring of nutria fur. The ladies of Park Avenue will be mighty pleased indeed.

Evening, interestingly, was a slightly more nuanced affair, and it skewed younger, too, targeting a Hollywood set. Jessica Biel and her stylist sat front and center. There was a subtle knee-length stunner in beaded lace jacquard and a black double-faced coat embroidered in a similar Art Deco style, as well as a rather cool-looking matador's organza blouse and high-waisted black pants with fans embroidered down the sides. But de la Renta focused most of his after-dark efforts on glamour gowns. The highlights of the bunch were a silvery cowl-neck column with a lamé skirt and a dove-gray organza long-sleeve style with touches here and there of glittery beads and scads of fluttering ruffles at the hem. A black faille number bustled in the back was made for grand exits. Oscar knows his woman doesn't want to fade into the woodwork; with this confident collection, there's no chance of that.
—Nicole Phelps

Osman

According to the show's press notes, this Osman collection was inspired by "strong, stylish female figures with a sense of adventure." But while the young designer Osman Yousefzada cited Peggy Guggenheim in particular, the long shapeless dresses, layered nubby-mohair check pieces, and a look that involved a blazer over a cropped top suggested some rather different female figures—namely, 1990's actresses, with Andie MacDowell in Green Card and Winona Ryder in Reality Bites coming specifically to mind. And while any excuse to cite the MacDowell/Depardieu film is welcome, that movie was notable for matching the badness of MacDowell's acting with the dodginess of her wardrobe. Nubby mohair? And in check?

Yousefzada has a tendency to see inspirations in his work that remain opaque to most others: Last time, it was "Mrs. Simpson" who got a name check, even though the clothes looked a lot sportier and skimpier than anything ever worn by Wallis herself. Now, this isn't necessarily a problem—when has a fashion press release ever really reflected what's on the runway? But it only works as long as the clothes are good, and that is a bit more problematic here. Quite why, though, is a puzzle, as the boy can cut a good dress. This was proven by the opener, in which four models marched out together (starting the show off on a very nineties note, with its reference to the famous Cindy/Naomi/Linda/Christy moment on Versace's runway). The quartet wore beautiful draped black dresses from Yousefzada's new capsule jersey collection. This is just what London needs: a young designer who can make timeless, flattering clothes, who isn't trying to reinvent a wheel that needs no reinvention. But just when you're thinking Yousefzada could be the very useful product of a union between Diane von Furstenberg and Donna Karan, he brings out some oversize palazzo pants and an unfortunate cocoon of a fur coat. Perhaps his jersey collection will remind the designer that sticking to what he does best is more fun for both him and onlookers.
—Hadley Freeman

Paris 68

Marcella Lindeberg has moved 25 times in the past 13 years. If she's not a free spirit, I can't imagine who is. And freedom is what the name Paris 68 means to her. The radical spirit of all those French students and workers who manned the barricades in 1968 to express their disgust for the war in Vietnam has devolved into Lindeberg's collection of clothes for women who are, as she put it, "on the move all the time as mothers and wives." Women, she insisted, who were just like her, shopping for groceries and cooking for their families. That was a little hard to believe given that, at the time Lindeberg said this, she was wearing a sleeveless second-skin dress in black silk georgette, its hem a riot of vibrating tassels, its single concession to mumsiness an elasticized waist. But Lindeberg has always been a rock 'n' roll mom.

Yesterday she was creatively consulting on William Rast with her husband, Johan; today she was launching her own long-time-coming collection (Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel turned up in a show of support). And tomorrow? Are Depeche Mode in town? She'll be there. Her clothes were a reflection of Gahan/Gore's very particular rock-tastic spirit—dark, gothic, strict, but Lurex-sparkly. If the huge shoulders were a little too Balmain-esque, the tensely tailored jackets with their flaring peplums were the kind of items that scream for a rock-chick strut. The adult-diaper construction that dictated the silhouette of the pants was unfortunate. That same rock chick would probably prefer the pelmet minis with matching tights, maybe even when paired with a swirling cape. Paging Batgirl! But even the most eccentric aspects of the collection could be justified by the fact that Marcella Lindeberg is the woman these clothes were designed for. And that is true fashion integrity.
—Tim Blanks

Paul Smith

Sigmund Freud insisted women were a perennial mystery. That was before he went to a Paul Smith show. Who was this woman, progressing from a sharply tailored hunting jacket (albeit in a lurid yellow) through trad tweed, gray flannel, and florals to a pair of plus fours in aqua-colored plastic? I guess she was kind of a country girl, but someone had clearly laced her punch, because she became progressively more unhinged as the show went on. Admittedly, she was wearing green support hose printed with riding boots from the onset (now there's an economical answer to the cost of shoe leather), but for a while, she almost caught the mood of Madonna in her strict lady-of-the-manor moment. The gray pleated skirt, the gray hacking jacket, the black tailcoat with the plus fours—so muted. But maybe she'd been curled up with Julien Macdonald reading Jilly Cooper's Riders, because the good country girl came over with a big case of bad. She slipped into a lurid orange cocktail dress and fishnet tights, and sheer gauzy knits that slouched off one shoulder. Then her fishnets had big holes in them, and she was wearing punky red and black striped knits and a full-skirted fifties party dress covered with black netting. And thus we came to those plastic plus fours, which is where we left Sigmund scratching his head.
—Tim Blanks

Pedro Lourenço

Here's one that made Paris fashion sit upright on its little gold chairs: Brazilian designer Pedro Lourenço sending out a precociously accomplished, startlingly directional collection at the age of 19. Perhaps it was the power of public relations firm KCD, the endorsement of stylist Brana Wolf, and sheer incredulity over talk of the latest teen in fashion that brought a stellar professional front row to the Westin Hotel at 8 p.m., but the skeptics who walked in walked out genuinely amazed.

Lourenço, it turned out, is working, with the complete conviction of youth, on the rigid shapes and geometries that are just beginning to make news. His paneled leather dresses in beige, black, and brown had high necks, long sleeves, and rows of stiff horizontal plastic slats and buttons, suggesting something between military frogging and venetian blinds. More of the same plastics—this time cut into triangles and vertically lodged, finlike, around the skirt of a dress—gave the illusion of a kilt or pleated skirt as it moved.

And that was astonishing. Anyone with an eye to what's going on in fashion—this year's flippy miniskirt silhouette, or the fact that many designers are playing with latex and leather and pushing to create new volumes—would recognize Lourenço as creatively on the same sort of track as, say, the cohort just graduated from Central Saint Martins, or even some aspects of what Nicolas Ghesquière is producing at Balenciaga. Lourenço, post-show, described his inspiration as "Diana the Huntress, and the Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer."

Even more remarkable was the level of technical accomplishment in the color-blocked collection. That, it transpires, is because the designer has the help of his parents, Glória Coelho and Reinaldo Lourenço, who are both mainstay designers of São Paulo's fashion community, and who own factories that can produce the boy's clothes. Of course, all that puts him ahead of his peers in terms of access to everything from fabrics to the almost laughably grand setting of his debut—the room Yves Saint Laurent used for his couture shows. Yet no matter how young and how privileged he may be, the only test Lourenço actually faces is the one where insiders consider whether his clothes have genuine relevance and something new to say. As they left the room, the verdict was in: They do.
—Sarah Mower

Peter Jensen

OK, he was born in Denmark, but Peter Jensen's design aesthetic has an intrinsically British camp-ness. Why did he call his new collection Muriel? Because Muriel Spark was the author of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and Maggie Smith's performance in the movie version, as the schoolteacher molding impressionable young minds in Edinburgh, Scotland (it won her an Oscar), is the quintessence of a subspecies of crisp, schoolmarm drag. Against a painted backdrop of Jean Brodie's classroom, Jensen paraded his own version of the Brodie gals—part woman, part Lolita minx. He shortened their uniforms to pelmet proportions and rendered their tartans in a pair of velvet bloomers. And, in an odd way, he also seemed to honor the make-do economy of the novel's period (the thirties) by cropping a jacket or a shirt out of cotton ticking.

Jean Brodie aside, there were also items that were pure Jensen whimsy, like the jumpsuit printed with the changing of the guards, or the translucent white smock that floated over a skintight strappy black dress (virgin and whore in one package). The models also sported seamed stockings and ruffled heels that would have made a girl's night out during World War II. But Jensen isn't as wayward as these notes might suggest. He had Nina Persson from the Cardigans performing love songs live ("Love" by John Lennon, "Solitaire" by the Carpenters). What better way to mark Valentine's Day?
—Tim Blanks

Peter Pilotto

The progress of Peter Pilotto is becoming a London phenomenon. Over the past few seasons, he and his partner, Christopher De Vos, have become known for digitally printing, cutting, and draping a steady series of subtly patterned dresses engineered so flatteringly to so many women's physiques that retailers just can't keep them in stock. Now, though, these designers are pushing themselves further. "We don't want to get categorized as cocktail-y print designers," Pilotto said. "So we're trying tailoring and more daywear."

They picked a brownish-orangey palette drawn from seventies interiors and then worked their way into all sorts of new categories and materials: coats, cut close to the body in printed Harris tweed; leather patchwork integrated into cardigans and skirts; tailored trousers; shirt-tunic-jacket hybrids; and here and there, outcrops of racoon. Amazingly—for a nascent business that is still housed in the shared studios of the Centre for Fashion Enterprise in the East End—it all held together with professional-looking aplomb. Meanwhile, they didn't neglect the signature Pilotto look, turning up the sophistication level by adding a flash of silver leather to a bodice and sliding in jersey panels to add shape. There were some great dresses, and prints, too—this time an amalgamation of photographic images of mercury splashes and Liberty florals and paisleys blended and faded out in an inimitable way on Pilotto's computer. Very well done.
—Sarah Mower

Peter Som

It's been a year and a half since Peter Som showed on the runway. But today marked his return, after the more scaled-back presentations of the past two seasons. "It feels great," Som said backstage. "You sort of get that adrenaline rush, that heightened sense of excitement."

Inspired by last summer's Ang Lee film Taking Woodstock, Som gently nudged his eclectic uptown lady in the direction of Yasgur's farm. "There's almost not a single solid fabric," Som said. "It's all printed or textured." He wasn't kidding. Most looks worked a fearlessly mismatched mélange of florals and checks and Swarovski beading and tweeds and dyed furs and paillettes and marled knits and, well, you get the idea. These were bookended by sweet cloches by Albertus Swanepoel and almost glam-rock, color-blocked granny boots and chunky platform sandals (made in collaboration with Brit It girl Charlotte Dellal's label, Charlotte Olympia). But the real news was the seventies-inflected silhouettes (Woodstock came right at the tail end of the sixties, after all). The shift brought new life to Som, whose clothes can get stuck in a Kennedy-era routine. It also gave a visible lift to showgoers, who are starting to realize they've wearied of skinny pants and big shoulders.

The renewed energy would seem to mark a turning point for Som, who has struggled for survival since the implosion of Bill Blass. It's evident he's been hard at work—and not just on his own label. The rumor that the designer has been consulting for Tommy Hilfiger is now confirmed. Som declined to offer any specifics about his side gig, only saying, "It's been very exciting. [Tommy] has been a pleasure to work with. We'll see how it goes."
—Meenal Mistry

Philosophy

This morning's Philosophy di Alberta Ferretti show—an intimate seated salon affair—couldn't have been more different from the label's past few presentations. Those always seemed more like a cocktail party that incidentally had models stomping up and down a runway. "For five seasons we have been doing the same situation," said Alberta Ferretti after the show. "For this, it is important to see the dress." She was right; these clothes were worth studying without the distraction of a glass of Champagne or an air-kiss.

The designer revisited the boy-girl thing that she loves to explore, but there was a newly elevated level of polish to the luxuriously tailored officer's coats in wools and thick buttery leathers and their counterpoint of romantic lace dresses. To that mix, Ferretti injected a naughty-edged propriety with glossy black Victorian lace-up knee boots and beautiful high-starched collars with laser-cut edges and lace insets. There was more of that duality on chic coats that were plain and proper in front and turned to reveal a sexy and chic flare of pleats.

Awards season is coming up, and evening is an important element of this red-carpet staple. One standout: a pale gray bias-cut gown made of various layers of lace and sequins topped with a slim ruffled knit and white collar. It may not be for every girl, but we'd give it Best Dressed on the right young starlet.
—Meenal Mistry

Pollini

Pollini, formerly a ladylike runway collection, has had a complete overhaul. Since he came to the company, Jonathan Saunders has steered it in a new direction—off the catwalk and toward accessibly priced, younger clothes. This season, the offerings reflect the sportier feeling of his eponymous collection in London. Parkas, bombers, hoodies, and ribbed knitwear are proposed as elements to layer with over-the-head shifts and print dresses and little pleated skirts with enough of a suggestion of kilt about them to be cool.
—Sarah Mower

Ports 1961

The tension between nature and technology served as Tia Cibani's starting point this season, and it mostly worked for her. "I like the idea of taking something traditional and giving it a modern spin," she said backstage. Highlights included a blouse cut in neoprene, a belted tweed coat with rubberized detailing, and a wool vest fused together at the seams; less successful was a loose, oddly fitting knit-and-leather dress. In the past, Cibani had sometimes gone a bit National Geographic with her literal translations of tribal and ethnic themes—but this time an earthy palette in combination with clean lines gave the collection a nomad appeal that, rather than being too specific, was pleasingly pan-global. For those of us stuck in the urban jungle of New York this week, the nude wellies worn by Iris Strubegger at the opening of the show would be ideal for storming through the slushy streets.
—Romney Leader

PPQ

PPQ was the perfect show to close Saturday at London fashion week. The dressed-up, dragged-up crowd was primed for a night out, so they weren't going to be picky about fashion nuances like fabric and fit. Not important when Amy Molyneaux and Percy Parker have cornered the market on good-time party dresses, like the strapless black velvet peplumed number with the bordello-worthy gold trim, or the tiered dress with the ruffled neckline that looked like a Zeta-Jones pick for Zorro 2010.

Molyneaux and Parker have an instinct for the suburban femme fatale. She sported gilded talons to go with keyhole necklines, golden harem pants, and leopard-print Lurex. And when the mercury drops, she'll be wearing a parka trimmed with a huge swath of fur—black, of course, unless she makes an exception for the gold leather trench. Otherwise, the PPQ finale looked like a parade of pretty mourners at a rock 'n' roll funeral.
—Tim Blanks

Prabal Gurung

Since his Spring show last September, Prabal Gurung has seen his profile rise and rise. Demi Moore, his number one fan, and Thandie Newton wore his cocktail dresses on the red carpet, and he made a red gown for Oprah Winfrey to wear on the cover of O magazine. His Fall collection, the first one he's put on the runway, won't slow his upward trajectory one bit. On the contrary, it shows that Gurung is just as savvy a tailor as he is a dressmaker.

He opened with a bold, what-you-see-is-not-what-you-get coat—white cashmere coming, black going. Color-blocking here was more than just a decorative motif. Clever gray-in-front, black-in-back trousers, for example, were cut with leg-elongating convex seams. Jackets, too, were inventive without being tricky. Both elegant and utterly cool, a black-and-white iridescent tweed blazer with draped black sleeves had the potential to cross generational and uptown-downtown divides.

There was hardly a shortage of fabulous dresses, however. Among the best were a pair of narrowly fitted sheaths, one in camel cashmere with draped white inserts, and another in that sparkly tweed spliced with black faille. A few of the draped viscose gazar cocktail numbers were a bit busy around the neckline and shoulders. But Avatar's Zoe Saldana, who was whisked out from backstage moments before the show started, would look stunning for her turn on the Oscar red carpet in the finale dress, a strapless gown in that crimson viscose gazar with a cascade of sculptural black ruffles below the waist.
—Nicole Phelps

Prada

To take a lead now in the headlong rush and cacophony of multi-platform fashion-news generation, it takes a clear mind to figure out what women want, and what we're lacking. And, far more radically, to address aspects of the system that have been (to say the least) annoying the hell out of many. Miuccia Prada did that today with a calm shrug.

"It's normal clothes," she said backstage before her show. "Classics. Revising the things I did in the nineties." Behind her, models, hair done up in sixties beehives, were changing. Among them were Doutzen Kroes, Catherine McNeil, Lara Stone, and Miranda Kerr, young women whose relatively curvaceous beauty has generally exempted them from being cast as exemplars of female gorgeousness on runways such as Prada's for the past few years.

The clothes themselves were a deliberate, and quietly humorous, compliment to the womanly. If it's the possession of breasts that's been bothering model-casting agents for the past few years, this collection was a nightmare scenario for them. The ample bust was the unavoidable focal point of the silhouette, picked out in balconies of lace ruffles and upstanding pointy-bra formations on raised-waist, wide-skirted dresses and coats. Any girl on the runway who didn't have the natural Bardot-esque equipment was bestowed with it by means of frothy fabric placements, but the eye naturally migrated to the ones who did. The others, young and pretty as they are, marched on in the usual kind of anonymity. In fashion, appreciating the exceptional is always more interesting.

Model politics apart, this was not a one-issue shape-lib show. For aficionados, the collection was, as the designer promised, a thorough revisiting of Prada's strengths. She worked the house double-face cashmere into flattering dance-skirted fifties-sixties dresses and skirts, detailed jackets and coats with double-layered collars of cable knit and fur, cut A-line skirts in patent leather, and reprised her signature scratchy-grid prints. Then she broke into an extended riff on Prada knitwear, made into tweedy peacoat-ed suits and chunky belted sweaters. By the time she sent out black coats, smothered with jet embroidery, the entire repertoire of brand Prada—down to the pointy pumps and kooky tweedy socks—had been refreshed and reconsolidated.

It was nice to see that Prada envisages this being worn by women other than the zombie army of teen models that has roamed her runway recently—and that has influenced others to mimic that uniform aesthetic. Customers, she can be assured, will like that shift—but will it have a bigger ripple effect than that? Miuccia Prada is a fashion-industry influencer. Let's see who scrambles to follow the leader.
—Sarah Mower

Preen

After a good fashion show, you often don't need to ask the person next to you what he or she thought. You just sense it. That was the case today at Preen, where the palpable feeling among the crowd of It girls, bloggers, and important editors was that talented design duo Justin Thornton and Thea Bregazzi had taken their work to a new level. Before the show, the pair explained that their starting point was the Peter Saville floral album-cover design of New Order's Power, Corruption & Lies. "That was the feminine, almost pretty side," Thornton said, "and then we wanted to add masculine tailoring." The latter came via Savile Row stalwart Gieves & Hawkes in its first collaboration with a womenswear label.

The opening look was a floral bustier dress worn with a cropped turtleneck knit that exposed a band of skin in front and a bra strap in back. Tricky? Maybe, but that only made it doubly impressive that it was executed so well. This vein of sexy subversion was carefully laid into gorgeously traditional suiting cut with a distinctly mannish proportion. But let's not call these "boyfriend" pieces; "husband" seems more appropriate. The designers softened the harder edges with airily sophisticated silk and cashmere dresses, along with cocoon coats so cocoon-y you could spend an entire winter in them, especially if you are lucky enough to have one in fur cleverly cut to look like croc. Perhaps even more covetable was the last look worn by Anja Rubik—part of a grouping built around a crisp, white button-down. It was polished and grown-up, but also preserved this label's cool factor. Preen's foothold in New York fashion just dug in a little deeper.
—Meenal Mistry

Pringle of Scotland

Clare Waight Keller performed a little fashion magic with the new Pringle collection. She wove cashmere with a soluble yarn that dissolved when the material was washed, leaving a mesh of impossibly perfect little cashmere squares, and she made that almost as much a feature of the collection as the huge, slouchy pants with deep, standout pockets. Waight Keller based the trousers on fishermen's waders and paired them with skinny little tops in the mesh to create a seventies-ish silhouette.

But I was flashing much further back. That mesh was like something from the Middle Ages, with the tone-on-tone argyle as a ducal insignia. Waight Keller layered tabardlike shapes over kilts, evoking a medieval warrior woman. The green velvets she used, meanwhile, reminded me of colors worn by wandering minstrels. That was a wildly fanciful reaction on my part, but it did underscore the strong Celtic strain in the collection, which is fundamental to the Pringle DNA.

If those waders weren't entirely successful (that's a lot of pant for a body to bear), fishermen's knits contributed to a couple of the collection's strongest pieces: the white cabled sweater elongated into a dress, and the black knit with the swingy pleats and the mass of bobble around the shoulders. The designer's skill with knitwear was also obvious in the gray dress that side-tied over a gunmetal leather skirt.

Though Pringle is a work in progress, what stands out most clearly at this point is Waight Keller's confidence in integrating her own particular vision with the company's 195 years of history (and, beyond that, the essence of Scotland itself). She's taking risks en route. Hopefully, she'll soon start to reap the rewards.
—Tim Blanks

Proenza Schouler

Not that anyone doubted that Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough were New York fashion's cool kids, but for confirmation, you had only to glance at their front row tonight. Crammed in tight were Nicole Richie, Chloë Sevigny, Selma Blair, and Mary-Kate Olsen, more than one of whom came with her own bodyguard. Those starlets—and their social-set seatmates—are the target audience for the duo's energetic Fall collection, which had the edgy naïveté and sexy legginess that have lately become Proenza Schouler signatures.

The designers started off with a toggle jacket cropped below the breasts in a manner reminiscent of the silhouettes in their very first runway show. It was paired with high-waisted skinny jeans in a graffiti print made in collaboration with the denim label J Brand. (Just try keeping those on shelves.) The model carried their new P.S. 11 bag, a more structured take on the P.S. 1, and forged ahead on wooden-platform, stacked-heel shoes.

The scribble motif wasn't the collection's only eye-grabbing pattern. To create the woven jacquards they used for their baby-doll minidresses (worn, like almost everything in the show, with thigh-high hose), Hernandez and McCollough took photocopies of plaids, jiggling the fabrics on the copier's plate glass to create their blurred, distorted effects. Other prep-school standbys got seriously tweaked as well. Varsity jackets came with purple or green fur collars, while a snappy cheerleader skirt was teamed with a luxe black fox sweatshirt.

Relatively subdued and spare by comparison were a pair of accordion-pleated flannel minidresses in navy and pine green that were layered over black mesh shirts. Sometimes even It girls needs to dress like grown-ups. If not quite the wow that the duo's winning Spring collection was, tonight's outing was still a smart, satisfying sequel.
—Nicole Phelps

Rachel Comey

The plaid-flannel-and-knit-cap set came out for Rachel Comey's show Thursday evening, and with the designer's friends Hex Message playing in the background, the event felt more like an impromptu jam session than a runway show. But still, it's hard to look away from Comey's eccentric prints and quirky styling: The clothes soon reclaimed center stage—and the focus shifted to parsing the layered looks.

"Fall often feels heavy to me," Comey said beforehand. "I wanted it to feel lighter." A dark, metallic blue knit mini with a brown lace overlay got the message across, and sleek knee-high boots in caramel were actually oxfords worn with a pair of leather socks (a chic way to sate the leather craving we predict you'll succumb to in the months ahead).

Comey is wise to consider when customers will actually be buying these clothes; she designed for more than just blizzard conditions. Some of the collection's best pieces would be ideal for the waning days of Indian summer. Silky trousers with colorful flowers managed to be slim and slouchy (they'd look great with a plain white tee), and the long skirt in a gray and white graffiti cobweb print, worn with a nude top, was stellar in its groovy simplicity. Also of note were Comey's first forays into denim. Her high-waisted bright blue jeans with a white camellia print were sexy but smart, just the way the Comey customer likes it.
—Alison Baenen

Rachel Roy

For Fall, Rachel Roy built right on top of her pre-fall range, seen just over a month ago. While that collection took Moroccan military gear as inspiration, this time the designer wanted her fictional muse to embrace opulence in the same North African setting. But don't cue the Cleopatra headdresses just yet, although there was certainly plenty of bright sparkle and shine here, from a fully crocheted gold dress and jacket early on, straight through to the finale: a silver column gown crusted all over with pearls.

What was most interesting here were Roy's attempts at balance, which she views as her ongoing struggle, both personally and professionally. Here she played it out in a teeter-totter between masculine and feminine, sending out languid, almost athletic suits to counter party dresses with gathered waists. That search for balance seemed to bleed into her silhouettes, which have often been criticized for trying to do too much but were newly streamlined and sophisticated. You could see that perfectly in an evening look that Roy described as an Oscar dress for someone who wasn't nominated: a silvery black cable turtleneck paired with a long floral jacquard skirt. It's a look that would immediately make a woman the most confident, coolest, and chicest in the room, or on the red carpet.
—Meenal Mistry

Rad Hourani

One of the principal complaints about young designers is that they lack a unique point of view and, particularly when you're facing a packed fashion schedule, a reason to exist. That's not an issue with Canadian designer Rad Hourani, who launched his label three years ago with a laserlike focus. His is a modern goth ethos that fetishizes a strict, lean black silhouette with straight skinny pants and rectangular jackets. The designer is specific. His clothes are always unisex and symmetrical, and you'll never see a button chez Hourani, only zippers.

Because of this unmistakable signature, which owes a debt to Rick Owens and Helmut Lang, watching Hourani's show is all about the subtle evolutions. "It's always a continuation from the last season," he said backstage. "I never start a new inspiration board." Today's collection, rendered solely in black and an almost-black navy, focused on transformation and layering: The precise cuts and clean lines on these pieces made it hard to see where one started and the other ended. Still, the look was luxuriously bundled in leather, thick ribbed knits, and, new this season, black sequins, patent leather, and neoprene.

Much of the collection was riddled with zippers, furthering the transformative experiment Hourani started last season: zip on, zip off, turn a jacket into a vest or replace a leather sleeve with wool. Apparently, there was a single jacket on the runway worn ten different ways. Hourani has interesting ideas, which by all appearances are well executed, and lofty goals. He's caught the eye of the important fashion crowd. Soon, this newcomer may well leapfrog beyond his cult status.
—Meenal Mistry

Rag & Bone

Backstage, David Neville said, "It's a pivotal moment for us; it's our first women's show." To be clear, Neville and his partner, Marcus Wainwright, have been designing for women since 2005, but today was the first time the ambitious duo presented the collection on its own—away from their menswear. Maybe it's just coincidence, but it was their strongest effort to date, long on their cool, classic separates; accessorized to the hilt; and full of attitude. They took their inspiration, they explained, from the "crazy English guys who climbed Mount Everest in the twenties in tweed." Up first was a snug gray waistcoat worn over a blue plaid shirt and a densely knit mini kilt. From the model's belt hung three miniature pouches about the right size for an iPhone, a BlackBerry, and a stack of credit cards. The Himalayas by way of the U.K. may've been their starting point, but Neville and Wainwright are nothing if not New Yorkers now, and they know their downtown customer.

What'll she be wearing next fall? A green Harris Tweed jacket over a hoodie cardigan and cuffed shorts, or a sweater dress with a white shirtdress, trailing a long scarf and a catch-me-if-you-can air in her wake. For outerwear, it'll be a camouflage anorak, a patchwork plaid poncho, or a waterproof parka with a fur-trimmed hood—Neville and Wainwright are as interested in technical fabrics as ever. As for those accessories, they included (but weren't limited to) bolo ties, backpacks, knit sacks, legwarmers, stack-heel hiking boots, and more of those urban-girl must-have scarves. These two are in peak form.
—Nicole Phelps

Ralph Lauren

Over the course of his four-decade career, Ralph Lauren has made many looks his own—equestrian, country club, ski-lodge chic. Bohemian gypsy is a little more unexpected, but there were definite strains of that in today's show, and not only because Stevie Nicks was singing Fleetwood Mac's "Sisters of the Moon" on the soundtrack. Lauren got there via the Edwardian tailoring and romantic florals that his fans already know and love—not to mention a trove of beaded necklaces, beanies, and fingerless lace gloves.

Puffed shoulders made repeat appearances, here on a fitted charcoal herringbone jacket, there on a cotton flannel plaid blouse or jewel-tone velvet top; a black suede tunic with leg-of-mutton sleeves was sashed at the waist over flaring leggings. Mixing masculine and feminine with his usual deftness, Lauren slipped a chesterfield on top of a floor-grazing georgette dress, and cinched distressed leather belts around the washed Shetland wool jackets he paired with ruffled skirts.

There was a pinstripe interlude that looked tailor-made for his tony clientele, but not unlike his Spring collection, with its Great Depression-inspired beaten-up blue jeans, this one seemed pitched to a more downtown crowd. That was especially the case when it came to evening. A passementerie embroidered silk ottoman coat was plenty posh, ditto a black silk georgette and tulle beaded gown. His flower-print long dresses, however, were layered over lacy long-sleeve tees in a way we've seen young designers doing all week. If this felt like strange new territory for Lauren, there were moments—as with that silk georgette fils coupe gown—when it was fertile ground indeed.
—Nicole Phelps

Rebecca Taylor

It's well documented that Rebecca Taylor likes the sweeter sartorial details, and for Fall she hit that message home. "I wanted to do something that's a continuation of our basic look, but done in a new way," she said backstage. Dotty animal prints turned up on sporty puffer vests rather than the floaty silk frocks of seasons past, and you had to look twice to spot any florals (they formed the texture on a dusty blue jacquard blazer). Still, much of the collection was business as usual: sheer blouses, faux-fur jackets, and one too many riffs on the ruffled sweater. Brushing away those feelings of déjà vu were the gray stretch-suede over-the-knee boots that went with most of the looks. The long, clean line they created provided a modern counterbalance to all the tried-and-true Taylorisms.
—Romney Leader

Reed Krakoff

Almost a year in the making, Reed Krakoff's signature line had its launch at a gallery space in Chelsea today. All the big retailers came out to see if the creative head of Coach could work the same magic on his own ready-to-wear. For those unfamiliar with the designer's success story, a quick recap: When he arrived at the American leather-goods label in the mid-nineties, it was a sleepy $500 million company; now it's a $3 billion mega-brand. As for those retailers' reactions? Mostly pleased: Krakoff's collection of utilitarian sportswear in luxurious fabrics made for a promising debut.

You could see references to Bonnie Cashin, who designed clothes for Coach in the sixties, in the leather-edged outerwear; to Joseph Beuys in the felt coats; and to Krakoff's passion for industrial design in the gunmetal hardware and the different shades of gray he used. Creating a design vocabulary from absolute zero, though, is not without its challenges, and with its military-meets-minimal look, something in the mood of the show echoed Phoebe Philo's influential Spring collection for Celine. That quibble aside, there was lots to like. On the way out, everyone was whispering approvingly of the long midnight blue coat that topped a gray cardigan and extra-wide ivory moleskin pants. But Krakoff's chunky knits also deserve shout-outs, and so do a pair of shearling jackets. Those had a swagger the designer can build on next time.
—Nicole Phelps

Reem Acra

Reem Acra opted out of the traditional fashion week festivities this season, choosing instead to release a moody film on her Web site today that captures the spirit of her Fall effort. "I have a much wider audience out there than the ones who can come and see a show," Acra explained earlier this week at the video shoot. "I want my design statement to reach them as well." Whatever the reasoning, Acra is hardly alone in exploring the option of moving images this week. Several New York designers live-streamed their runways, adding to the noisy argument that the Web is the future for seasonal collections.

Fittingly, given this progressive approach, the clothes were mostly youthful and fashion-forward. Acra didn't hold back with her signature opulence and flair for all-out glamour, but the slouchy elastic-waist sequined frock, rainbow feather-and-bead vest, and wool jacquard coat with red shantung polka dots could work equally well for both a vibrant socialite and her teenage daughter. The designer veered into over-the-top territory at times—one look featured ombré shantung, tulle, gold sequins, ribbons, and an explosion of feather flowers at the shoulder—but for the most part the digital format appeared to bring new energy to the brand.
—Romney Leader

Requiem

The last several seasons have been challenging for small brands like Raffaele Borriello's Requiem. But according to the designer, business is picking up. Credit that to his timely introduction of lower-priced elements like embellished knits, coupled, on the other side of the coin, with a stubborn refusal to skimp on luxe fabrics or his preferred way of piecing them together into one frock. Predictable little black dresses aren't Borriello's cup of tea. Instead, a Fall cocktail number might come with gazar sleeves, a charmeuse bodice overlaid with mesh, and a skirt made from a leather look-alike wool. Other designers may be editing out long evening dresses from their shows, but not Borriello, who describes his label as "an end of the afternoon-into-evening collection." His most charming floor-grazer was a feminine take on the tuxedo.
—Nicole Phelps

Richard Chai Love

Last season, this expansion-minded New York designer debuted his contemporary line Richard Chai Love on the runway. It was a bold statement, since it meant relegating his designer collection to the showroom. But Love was, by all accounts, a hit for Spring, and today it took its second catwalk turn. "It just made sense," Chai explained to me in his studio the day before the show. "I want to nurture the [Love] business. The women's collection is already established."

Where Spring focused on individual pieces, Fall had an overarching theme: the broody-quirky harnessing of nineties grunge. There were mushroom-hued layers galore with military-inflected woolen coats, all manner of knits, silky printed button-downs, and even baby tees, worn over straight skirts to the ankle or slouched trousers. Pulled apart, this will amount to a mountain of merch, not a bad approach when you're looking to nurture a business.

Talking in the studio, Chai distanced himself from the G-word—unsurprisingly, given his time spent as a design director at Marc Jacobs. Certainly, he put his own spin on the subject with his signature arced seams and original double-take prints. (That floral everyone assumed to be Liberty is actually tiny origami cranes.) And the artful boy-meets-girl mix is one this designer has long explored.

It's a testament to Chai's skills that, as you watched the show, it was easy to forget this was a contemporary collection. When suddenly you remembered, it was a happy moment indeed.
—Meenal Mistry

Richard Nicoll

"OK. Let's stop the blah-blah! Just give us something to wear! This looked effortless. Job done. Great." Thus the chic Paris retailer Maria Luisa Poumaillou expressed the elation of the grown-up women leaving Richard Nicoll's show. The excitement: soft tailoring and modern separates carried off with a sustained aura of conviction and confidence. Nicoll's wrapped blazers, long skirts, oversize cashmere sweaters, and draped silk velvet came as a timely, well-judged reading of what women have been missing lately—the part of fashion that slipped into oblivion when short, tight dresses took over. Obviously, it took Phoebe Philo to shift the agenda on that, but Nicoll has always had an executive woman somewhere in his repertoire. In seasons past, to be honest, she's been prone to making pop-up appearances and then disappearing as if embarrassed, but this time, she's fully out, and no apologies.

In this second wave of the emancipation of the working woman (who'd have thought we'd still have to talk about that in the twenty-first century?), it's not good enough to fall back on retro clichés like pseudo-power suits. What Nicoll is contributing is a new language of work-relevant daywear unencumbered by tiresome and limiting fashion-y references. His solutions are centered on one-color dressing (taupe, rust, a beautiful Air Force blue), choice rather than uniform (he has pants, as well as long and short lengths), and a body-skimming fit (satin T-shirts, cashmere tunics). Easy. And yet so hard to do.
—Sarah Mower

Rick Owens

With their swept-back hair and swept-up eye makeup, Rick Owens' infeasibly attenuated tribe of women were an uncompromising vision of female power. Who were they, with their long, zigzag-patterned legs; asymmetric warrior wraps; bared arms; and intense hip-accentuated forward gait? "A sect of nuns," he said. "Glamorous nuns, with inner discipline."

That's Owens on a concept level, the one he believes in as a way of life, rather than a passing seasonal whim. The amazing thing, though, is that what might read as an insider tract, intelligible only to the initiated, is actually a wide-open book for a far broader fashion church. Look more closely, and Owens' way of showing is really a methodical demonstration of a jacket collection that comes in so many permutations that it can appeal to hard-core goths, working urbanites of all ages, and women with plenty of money to lavish on fur. As an outerwear specialist, he has an answer to puffers (down-filled wraps), biker jackets (slick to the ribs, and zippered up one side), hoodies (conceptual versions with geometric horn appliqués), and fur vests (kangaroo at the less expensive end, full-length mink at the ultra).

Beneath all this there were dippy, asymmetrical jersey skirts bunched into layered folds in front and a well-thought-out display of accessories: gloves encircled with fur tufts, wedge boots (most directionally in tan leather), and, on each look, those zigzag tights-cum-leggings. Ignore the apparent weirdness of Owens' point of view, and this could be seen as another of fashion's methodically commercial one-look collections, strategized to spotlight the house top-sellers as well as the best of them.
—Sarah Mower

Roberto Cavalli

Forty years of Roberto Cavalli—it scarcely seems credible. How many in the enormous audience for his Fall presentation were even born when he first set needle to appliqué to denim in his little shop in Saint-Tropez? But he's never forgotten the wealthy, glamorous boho set who were his first customers, and who, like him, are now knocking on 70. It was their rich-hippie look that shaped his Fall collection.

There were too many harem pants and classically tinged Diana the Huntress dresses (floaty tulle; backless; paired with flat sandals; and missing only a bow, some arrows, and a couple of golden apples), but their presence made the more structured elements look better. Witness the brocaded military coats, or the tightly tailored black doublets with tiny laser-cut slashes. Doublets? Well, it's hard not to come over all Renaissance-like with Cavalli, because his appreciation of the artisanship of his native Florence has always been his greatest asset. In this collection, his use of brocade, dévoré, studded leather, and embroidered broadtail all felt like vintage flourishes out of time. Even his signature brash animal prints were blurred and faded, as if time had its way with them. It was romantic in its own decadent way. The impression was compounded by a backdrop that impressively evoked a crumbling palazzo. Still, there was promising modernity in the way Cavalli composed outfits from light, multilayered pieces.

In his show notes, the designer claimed he'd always created dresses for the most beautiful women and "for men who need the beauty of women to complete themselves." He poignantly insisted he had found just such a woman in his wife, Eva.
—Tim Blanks

Rochas

Cactus Flower. If this one hasn't made your Netflix queue, it's time to add it. Marco Zanini based his third collection for Rochas on the half-forgotten 1969 romantic comedy starring Goldie Hawn and Ingrid Bergman, an odd couple if ever there was one. "It's a smiley collection, joyful," he said beforehand. "I did a lot of playing with materials and colors that are weird together." He wasn't wrong there; this was as zany and retro as anything we've seen for Fall. The through line with his more sedate Spring outing: color. Zanini has a fearless way of taking, say, a slate blue jacket festooned with a navy ribbon bow on the hip pocket and mixing it with a turquoise skirt, a yellow lamé blouse, wine-colored gloves, and gold-piped blush satin pumps.

His color sense wasn't the only thing daring about this collection, which was simple in its lines but definitely not minimal. There were the models' big, teased 'dos, chalky coral lips, and trippy heels, but most of all there was the show's unapologetically late-sixties/early-seventies vibe. It came through in the metallic brocade tunic with matching kick flares and in the exaggerated pointy collar of a silk blouse worn with a pinafore shift. Although the fabrics back in the day probably didn't feel quite so deluxe as Zanini's will, there was little else to distinguish those pieces from vintage. Intriguing, certainly, but potentially a tough sell.

The good news is that there were plenty of other things here to charm the woman who appreciates Zanini's way with little details: Take the ribbed camel cardigan with the gold leather button placket and elbow patches, or another sweater in gray with the label intarsia-ed below the collar in the back. There were also smart-looking coats, one in cheetah-spotted ponyskin and another in the season's de rigueur camel. That brought a smile to your face, and not an ironic one.
—Nicole Phelps

Rodarte

The overhead lights went out, a team of assistants hurriedly spread paper confetti all over the concrete runway, and two women set to lighting a sculpture of white wax candles. The atmosphere thus established, Kate and Laura Mulleavy's first model emerged in a nude top trimmed in vertical strips of ribbon, a wrap miniskirt made from what could've once been a handwoven blanket, and lace leggings. On her feet: knit socks and Nicholas Kirkwood's towering shoes, the heels this time cleverly designed to look like melting wax.

Welcome to Rodarte's latest trip. Before their show, the sisters explained that a long drive from El Paso to Marfa, Texas, got them thinking they might like to explore their Mexican roots. From there, they became interested in the troubled border town of Ciudad Juárez; the hazy, dreamlike quality of the landscape there; and the maquiladora workers going to the factory in the middle of the night. And that, according to the designers, who certainly know how to romance a pitch, led to this conclusion: They'd build a collection off the idea of sleepwalking.

That concept gave the show its arts-and-crafts, naïve, almost random quality. Dresses were patchworked together from floral chiffons, vintage lace, burnout velvets, and other salvaged bits from the imagined maquiladoras' floors and then draped with narrow, twisting swaths of fabric or strands of pearls. The country cousins of their now-famous cobweb sweaters, this season's knits had an even quirkier charm, resembling as they did crocheted doilies and hook rugs fringed with long strands of yarn. Shearling jackets, too, got the Rodarte treatment, embroidered here and there with what looked like tufts of goat hair. The show ended with a quartet of ethereal, unraveling, rather beautiful white dresses that alternately called to mind quinceañera parties, corpse brides, and, if you wanted to look at it through a really dark prism, the ghosts of the victims of Juárez's drug wars.

As at Marc Jacobs, however, serenity, not darkness, was the abiding impression, abetted by a soundtrack of pop standards like "Blue Moon." What was interesting about the Mulleavys' latest dreamworld was how playful it felt compared to the blood-and-guts ferocity of their outing last September. Under the dark light during the finale, the models' candlestick heels suddenly glowed as if lit. The Rodarte vision is still a rarefied one, remote for the most part from the real day-to-day question of what to wear now, and the patchwork effect wasn't as convincingly executed as at their previous show, but it was nice to see the sisters lighten up.
—Nicole Phelps

Roksanda Ilincic

The crimped hair and the soundtrack from the glam, disco-era seventies put Roksanda Ilincic's audience in a good mood—not an easy thing to swing on a wet weekday afternoon. The clothes, too, made for the kind of viewing that lets a woman lower her hackles and relax while imagining what she might look like at some party or other in the fall. Ilincic's attraction is that she's a woman designer who goes out a lot, and knows that the easiest things sometimes work best. Her confidence and accomplishment in spinning a bolt of fabric around the body and fastening it with a single seam is growing season by season, and the addition of matte gray jersey to her signature fluid charmeuse silhouettes looked good.

What's new this season is the stealthy broadening of her vocabulary into items that could, for the first time, be construed as daywear. She's branched into floppy crepe blouses (which chime nicely with the season's feel for luxe sportswear) and a few pieces of outerwear. A couple of sweeping bouclé coats with fox sleeves and a belted jacket recall the panache of forties actresses hurrying to work on the MGM lot. A little glamour for everyday? No harm in that.
—Sarah Mower

Roland Mouret

For a designer who first caused a stir with sizzling, form-enhancing dresses, this season's talk about the need for rational daywear must be concerning and possibly confusing. Roland Mouret, who's been working on adding coats and knitwear to his repertoire for a while, seemed to allow it to back him into an oddly gloomy corner for Fall. This time, he turned his career-long technique of cutting and wrapping fabric on the square into constructs involving draped and hoicked-up shapes manipulated into hooded outerwear in tweedy, grayish, muted off-colors. That wasn't all he had, but it set the show off on a drabber note than usual.

Experimenting with broadening one's scope is not in itself at all wrong, of course. In his studio in London, Mouret has devoted much thought and research to developing a wardrobe of multipurpose, transformable pieces—his tunic-top dress, and the thing he calls a "carré," which can be worn as either a top or a skirt, suspended from ribbon tapes. Alongside that, he's come up with patterned twinsets—a short sweater and longer cardigan, in this show—and narrow pants, in velvet. At times though, the complicated draping around the middle section of skirts, and the pulled-up back view on a shirtdress canceled out Mouret's main go-to attraction. Flattery through simplicity is what he does best, and those overelaborate items were a red flag for anyone concerned with wearability.

Still, Mouret's talent for modern evening glamour was present and correct in more than one way this week in Paris. His long, dusty pink dress with a black ribbon tied in the small of a bared back had the kind of quietly sexy sophistication his customers gravitate toward. One of them happens to be Carla Bruni-Sarkozy. This week, she wore Mouret's long-sleeved, covered-up jade evening gown with a slit skirt to a state dinner at the Elysée Palace. It had that combination of simplicity, propriety, and, yes, form-enhancing sizzle all women clock from a mile off. Once Mouret refocuses more on that, he'll be back on track.
—Sarah Mower

Rue du Mail

In the three years of Rue du Mail's existence, Martine Sitbon has made the label a go-to source for a dress that's keyed into the trends without being desperate about it. Tailoring hasn't necessarily been her thing, but it would've been impossible for her to miss fashion's move toward more structured silhouettes; so, keeping current, she added some to her Fall lineup tonight.

Belted high on the waist, a man's oversize jacket in a shiny/matte shade of brown became a dress. Bermuda shorts, which have been popping up with regularity elsewhere, appeared here in satin for evening, or in a more traditional suiting fabric with a paper-bag waist and paired with a fitted jacket for day. Trenches received a fair bit of Sitbon's attention—she played with tucks and folds around the shoulders on one, and spliced another in half on the front. There were also a few interesting quilted jackets in the mix; with their puffy, shawl-like lapels, they almost looked like puffers.

As timely as most of that was, Sitbon's heart belongs to frocks. They came in fitted and ruched knits and a bell-shaped sleeveless velvet, and there was a lot of novelty in a group made from swagged silk threads, especially the narrow gold number. The smart investment this season? That would be the slender coat-dress. Everybody's got a version on their runway, but Rue du Mail's—with its one draped and fringed lapel—is more sexy than boxy, guaranteeing higher returns.
—Nicole Phelps

Ruffian

Space is the place for Ruffian this season. Antique constellation prints and images of Orion taken by the Hubble telescope decorated the designers' silk blouses, and skirtsuits with trim, cropped jackets and flaring, to-the-knee skirts were cut in silvery bouclé inspired by Vincent van Gogh's masterpiece The Starry Night. These, along with a strong lineup of outerwear—a pair of elegant, narrow capes with curving armholes and a perky navy peacoat with a leather collar and belt were standouts—will please the tony, upper-crust part of Brian Wolk and Claude Morais' clientele.

Lately, though, having befriended Marc Jacobs and Lorenzo Martone (the latter of whom is hosting a big after-party for them at the Box), the duo has been running with a clubby crowd. So there was something of a disco eighties vibe to stretch jersey dresses inset with sequins of crescent moons and mohair sweatshirts worn with high-waisted, shimmery silk moiré leggings.

It made for a bit of a mixed message, but in this case, that's not necessarily a criticism. A little something for the ladies who lunch, and some more for the ladies who party-hop, just might be the smartest way to build the Ruffian brand.
—Nicole Phelps

Sacai

Everything is not what it seems at Sacai. What looks like a Rue Cambon skirtsuit reveals itself upon closer inspection to be a tweedy sleeveless vest topping a blouse with the same tweedy sleeves. (Designer Chitose Abe's mannequin presentation makes it possible to spot the difference.) The skirt, by the way, appears to have shirttails peeking out between the pleats, but that's another optical illusion. Meanwhile, the back of a deceptively simple cable-knit sweater dress is actually a cotton poplin shirt spliced to a flaring wool miniskirt. If all that sounds like heavy-handed gimmickry, it's not. Sacai's way of tweaking classics, splicing the masculine with the feminine, and dissecting and reconstructing familiar items is utterly charming. What makes it smart and gives the label's clothes a point of difference on the sales floor is the way, say, the white pearl-embroidered slip underneath a charcoal knit blazer is detachable. That provides the woman who wears it more than two looks in one—the lacy little extra can potentially be worn under countless other pieces already in her wardrobe.

Joining those multitaskers in Abe's strong lineup were substantial Fair Isle knits, draped silk scarf dresses, and schoolboy-ish toggle coats with girlish flared sleeves, along with some clever gloves trimmed at the wrist with pearls, silver chain, and a spray of tulle. Who needs jewelry?
—Nicole Phelps

Salvatore Ferragamo

Not unlike the Dolce & Gabbana show earlier in the day, the Salvatore Ferragamo runway presentation began with a short film. Ferragamo's clip celebrated the house history, flashing on images of such famous clients as Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, and Greta Garbo, whose personal style is the subject of a just-opened exhibition sponsored by the Italian brand at the Milan Triennale. Massimiliano Giornetti, the company's menswear designer, has just taken over the reins on the women's side, and the subtext of the video was clear: He would be returning the brand to its roots.

His predecessor, Cristina Ortiz, had struggled to find the appropriate tone for the contemporary iteration of the label. Giornetti's collection looked more like a seventies interpretation of Garbo's wardrobe than her thirties originals, but that, in its own way, is rather fortuitously in keeping with the mood of the season. Focusing on staples, he sent out rangy suede trenches and leather-edged capes. On the suit front, there was a pinstripe three-piecer that looked cut for the current Ferragamo customer, as well as a menswear check jacket worn with matching cuffed shorts seemingly designed to woo a new, young one. A gray camp shirt, paired with a long, pleated black leather skirt, and belted Lurex-shot sweater dresses were among the more casual offerings. Accessorizing it all were timely looking fedoras, shoulder-strap bags that hit at the hip, and matte crocodile knee-high boots. For nights on the town, things were flashier, but just a bit. The Ferragamo woman can go with a liquid bronze jersey gown or a metal-embroidered tunic-length tank with cropped pants.

As she was walking out, a fellow observer remarked, "That's what Ferragamo should look like." She was right.
—Nicole Phelps

Sharon Wauchob

What is minimalism? Backstage before her show, Sharon Wauchob said that was the question occupying her thoughts this season. More specifically, how does a designer who likes femininity and tactile things, as she does, go about doing minimal? Her approach was to consider cut—not the silhouette, although that was edgily spare and clean, but the process of literally slicing her fabrics and sometimes reweaving the excised material back into the clothes.

The singular focus of the collection made for a somewhat repetitive runway viewing experience—but it still produced some desirable pieces, like the asymmetrically draped black leather dresses with hand-cut fringes that opened the proceedings; the jewel-tone dip-dyed and spliced chiffon dresses that closed them; and, more tangentially, a gold bead and leather mesh tunic. The softness of these looks was balanced by strong wool coats trimmed in fur or croc-stamped leather.

Wauchob's ability to suss out the trends and synthesize them in a sexy, not overly intellectual way will come in handy at her new gig as creative director of Edun, the socially conscious design label launched by Bono and his wife, Ali Hewson. The latter looked pleased as she took everything in from the front row.
—Nicole Phelps

Shipley & Halmos

There were no complicated themes or inspiration stories. Instead, Sam Shipley and Jeff Halmos focused on one basic question: "What's in a woman's closet?" If the designers have their way, it'll be their updates on classic fare, like a five-pocket silk "jean" or a leather and wool varsity jacket. The duo's past collections have had a tendency to be one-note, but here they wisely emphasized a range of versatile options. Sheer Breton shirts, a cool ankle-length silk trench, and chunky alpaca-knit sweaters looked wearable but had enough flair to pique a girl's interest—it's the sort of approach that some of the most successful young New York designers have been taking. With their latest effort, Shipley and Halmos are aiming to position themselves in that company.
—Romney Leader

Sonia Rykiel

After two seasons of shows at her Boulevard Saint-Germain boutique, Sonia Rykiel returned to a larger space today. Just as you can count on her models smiling and slapping high fives, you can be sure that if it's Fall, there will be plenty of knits. A trio in colorful stripes evoked not only vintage Rykiel, but also her recent collection for H&M. Smart move: Lure them with fast fashion and hook them with the real thing. Also mingling on the runway were cardigan dresses, both fitted and slouchy; a frock that looked as if it were made from a pair of sweaters, one wrapped around the waist, the other around the bust; and some familiar trompe l'oeil faux-layered numbers.

What looked different for Rykiel, and like a nod to the current moment, were the oversize takes on classic menswear: a big, boxy suit with rolled cuffs (a bit too big, actually), a long red trench fastened with a giant safety pin, and baggy knit cargos held up by suspenders. By the finale, we were back in familiar territory, with models not yet born when the tune came out singing Nirvana's "Come as You Are" as they traipsed down the catwalk in coquettish ostrich-feather tanks, tunics, and coats. All in all, it was a bit predictable, but still loads of fun.
—Nicole Phelps

Sophia Kokosalaki

Sophia Kokosalaki captured something of the late eighties' dressed-up elegance at the opening of her Fall show: a softened version of that beige-to-caramel phase of glamorously drapey yet assertive tailoring that filtered into womenswear under the influence of the likes of Claude Montana. "I was thinking of the clothes my mother used to wear when I was growing up," she said, "and about the natural forms you see in the Greek landscape."

It added a personalized slant to the power-woman redux theme that's been building through Fall. Kokosalaki worked on reviving blouses, high-waisted pants, and suede cummerbund belts for her generation. Now in their thirties, her peers have moved past cramming themselves into biker jackets, jeans, and body-con dresses to wondering how to put themselves together as adults. As always in Kokosalaki's work, the ideas were filtered through her Greek identity. This time, her career-long obsession with draping produced layered, flyaway jersey dresses and a gauzy, subtle beige interpretation of her signature goddess dress—more examples of the kind of eveningwear that gives her fans an un-showy but confident way to walk into an event. Kokosalaki is never a chichi designer, and the nature influence in this collection wasn't a lushly romantic one. Perhaps the look of the shoes—a metal heel that resembled a parched husk of something organic, and the metallic embroideries on black—were an unconscious abstraction of the debris left by the forest fires that have plagued her home country. Either way, there was a quiet strength in this collection that maintains Kokosalaki's position as an independent voice.
—Sarah Mower

Sophie Theallet

Today was Sophie Théallet's first show since winning the big CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund purse. Ever the prudent design veteran, she explained a week ago in her Brooklyn studio, "I make wise choices. It's not going to change tomorrow." What is wise, of course, is funneling some of that cash into luxe fabrics and new categories. That's what Théallet did today in a collection that was appropriately inspired by fairy tales and recapturing the magic in fashion.

There was a continuation of the bohemian gypsy trip she started last Fall, though now it was laced with a seventies-era louche-ness. Those gorgeously gathered dirndl dresses—some in a delicate French floral cotton that is apparently très cher—were finished with mussed hair and slouchy, tasseled suede boots.

Théallet has always been dress-focused, and still is: This wasn't exactly a collection to ward off the wintry mix. But there was also her first round of lovely knitwear, lightly pointelled and ribbed, which sweetly coordinated with the berries and blues of her frocks. Warmer still were belted shearlings that threw off some of their rustic connotations with the chic flare of a peplum back. It's details like this that highlight Théallet's chops and put her ahead of the pack, as does the fine-tuning of creating an off-the-shoulder charmeuse dress that falls just so. "It's the simplest things that are the hardest," she said. But sometimes it's also the tall orders. One of the few problematic looks—a satin gown with bows trussing up its waist and sleeves—was part of a series of dresses based on a story where a girl asks for dresses the color of the moon and the sky.
—Meenal Mistry

Stærk

The portrait-filled book Us and Them, an encapsulation of the relationship and work of husband-and-wife photographers June and Helmut Newton, was Camilla Stærk's point of entry for Fall. "I love his woman," she said, referring to all the femmes fatales Helmut photographed obsessively. "It's very me, in a way." For Stærk, that means lots of black leather, and a certain moody, broody sensibility. A Newtown-esque toughness was apparent at her presentation, given jointly this season with friend and menswear designer Victor Glemaud. Red and nude leather ties worn under all-black outfits had a graphic appeal perfect for the pages of a magazine; how they'd fare commercially is another matter.

With leather making its way into seemingly everyone's collection this season, Stærk worked at giving hers a standout fluidity: A pair of nude pants that tapered at the ankle had the easy drape of sweatpants. For something a little fiercer, a suede-look jersey dress with saddle-inspired leather epaulets should fit the bill.
—Alison Baenen

Stella McCartney

Stella McCartney's show began with a fake recording of Tiger Woods' alleged call to his mistress, the one in which he asks her to remove her name from her voicemail because his wife has found her number on his phone. Things ended, as usual, with a Beatles song; this season it was "Mother Nature's Son." They made for perplexing, if thought-provoking, bookends to a collection of daywear that for the most part looked tailor-made not for celebrity groupies but for the smart, powerful businesswoman. It was clean, polished, and chic—three buzzwords of the season.

An unfettered charcoal coat, a notched lapel its only decoration, opened the show, and was followed by streamlined, hip-grazing tunics. When they were worn with narrow, tapering trousers or even stirrup pants, along with pointy kitten heels, they looked like modern, easy answers to the much maligned boardroom pantsuit. Just as often, though, they came without bottoms, which meant that there was a lot of leg on McCartney's runway. Plenty sexy, but perhaps not so user-friendly as a sleeveless coat-dress in camel or her beautifully spare double-breasted white coat.

For evening, the designer experimented with sheer organza overlays (a motif that also turned up at Givenchy). She draped them on top of a one-shoulder iridescent paillette dress or a nude bustier number embroidered with scarlet roses. In other words, they were quite a bit trickier than her fabulously minimal daywear.
—Nicole Phelps

Stephen Burrows

You can't fault Stephen Burrows for doing things his own way. The man is, after all, a CFDA Lifetime Achievement Award winner, and he's been turning out bright, joyous party looks since most of his competitors were in diapers. With his latest effort, an intimate presentation at his Garment District showroom, Burrows once again proved he can do more than just cut a great jersey dress.

"I looked at Gustav Klimt and Tiffany lamps," the designer said of his mood for Fall. Some of the signature jersey dresses featured abstract prints evocative of his colorful inspirations, but it was a solid maroon gown at the end that garnered the loudest cheers. It's true that the jersey numbers, timeless as they are, didn't necessarily scream, "Now, now, now!"—but the daywear showed a vital connection with current trends. Among the silhouettes we've seen in play elsewhere this week were an ultrawide-leg wool trouser, paired with a chunky cable sweater and fur vest, and a great black biker jacket with exaggerated shoulders, worn with skinny leather motocross leggings.

If it was tough to trace the connection between all the pieces shown, the crowd of well-wishers shouting "Bravo!" after each exit obviously didn't mind. They came to a Burrows show to see Burrows clothes, not trend for trend's sake.
—Romney Leader

Suno

Max Osterweis and Erin Beatty fielded a crush of recognizable well-wishers at their presentation, Ikram Goldman and Anna Wintour among them. Of course, along with a major buzz comes major pressure—but Suno's confident and spirited collection made it pretty clear the two-year-old label is going places.

The places they've been include Kenya, where Osterweis' mom has a house and the designers have found fabrics to rework into their acid-hued clothes. Africa is still on the itinerary, but Suno is now developing its own prints, as well. "We want to keep things pop-y and bright," Beatty said. "Girls are too confident just to wear black."

You've got to have moxie to wear Suno. It's about a print-on-print mix. A gray plaid cape worn over a red and gold tunic dress, tucked into a single-ruffle skirt rendered in orange and teal zigzags… it may be exhausting to read about, but the proportions in real life keep it fresh and endearingly cheeky. Osterweis' personal favorite look for Fall is sure to be popular among the crowd at Opening Ceremony (where Suno is stocked): a diamond-print minidress in blue, green, purple, and pink, with gathered shoulders and a bubble skirt. Worn under a black blazer, it's a look even the most committed all-black-wearing New Yorker could love.
—Alison Baenen

Sykes

Joanna Sykes is mesmerized by math. "It's all about the triangle," she insisted, pointing to the construction of her new collection, which was shaped by the geometries of Islamic textiles. There may indeed have been a good deal of craft involved in their creation, but in reality there was nothing so esoteric in the clothes themselves, which made a feature of bold proportions and exceptionally tactile fabrics, like the wool alpaca with a ponyskin feel. Sykes cut it into sexy little shorts, shown under a black jacket in leather so fine it felt like lambskin. Those same shorts would probably look good under the parka in a camel wool cashmere.

Sykes used black tape for drawstrings, a striking touch. Her draped dresses—cool in lilac, hot in orange—had a twenties feel which, with the mathematical undertow, brought Vionnet to mind. It's not such a bad echo for a designer on the rise. As before, Sykes showed her clothes on different generations of women. Daphne, aged 81, wore a black suede biker jacket very well.
—Tim Blanks

Talbot Runhof

Johnny Talbot and Adrian Runhof's experience designing ballet costumes for the Dortmund Opera House last summer clearly had a huge effect on them. Their Fall presentation was dance-inspired, from the tip of its ballerina topknots to the toe of its pointe slipper-influenced heels. Dress after dress exploded at the hem into tutus of tulle, and the finale featured a solo by Lisa-Maree Cullum, prima ballerina of the Bayerisches Staatsballett. Talbot name-checked Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale "The Red Shoes" as direct inspiration, while heaping scorn on the classic Powell-Pressburger film of the same name. Both spin a dramatic story of destructive obsession, which is scarcely what you'd expect to see reflected in the controlled cocktailwear that is Talbot Runhof's core business, but in fact a little more emotion would have been welcome in a tightly edited show that struck one note and stayed there.

Dark fabrics were draped and swagged for an effect that was anything but balletically airy, especially one floral print that looked like les fleurs du mal. The less said about the red propylene "legwarmers" the better. What levity there was came from the froths of tulle. Two gowns at the end featured a technique called "aluminum steaming," which loaned an elusive metallic shimmer to a floating floral print. They could almost have been the most glamorous shower curtains you ever did see. Following Cullum's solo (in red pointe slippers), the designers took their bow in red kicks. Cute.
—Tim Blanks

Tao

Tao Kurihara is a dreamer. Her whole show, in as much as could be discerned, seemed to be about a kind of somnambulism. At the end, her girls, who'd been dressed in various pouchy, drawstringed layers that might partially have been made up of brushed cotton pajamas and cozy patterned bedclothes, stood in a circle and closed their eyes.

Maybe they were meant to be visualizing what Kurihara meant by her tag for the collection, Flowing Journey. The audience was trying to figure that out, too. The general impression was of a typical House of Comme des Garçons high-concept collection, but without the coherent product base Kurihara usually makes visible in her shows. The components were black lace-covered dresses, chambray drawstringed top pieces, funny molded leopard-spot fezlike headwear, and fragmented art jackets festooned with cloth bags. Later, the voyage took in patchworked prints composed of Indian paisleys and chinoiserie fabrics and hooded dresses bearing some resemblance to djellabas. But in the end, it seemed like a rambling free-association session with no point of arrival—a journey during which Kurihara lost her audience somewhere fairly near the outset.
—Sarah Mower

Temperley London

Alice Temperley's Fall presentation was a smart, sophisticated salute to British style, inspired by classic Norman Parkinson photographs, some of which lined one wall at Milk Studios as an aide-mémoire. The other wall was hung with Adam Whitehead's portraits of modern beauties—Erin O'Connor, Susie Bick, Liberty Ross, Yasmin LeBon—wearing outfits from the new Temperley collection. If the photos bridged the decades, the clothes did, too. The designer compiled the most iconic British elements and styles to make her own statement: the striped boarding school blazer retailored, for instance, or the Union Jack reconfigured as a bold knit dress, like a distant memory of punk. The Crown Jewels were referenced in the gems that decorated shoulders and lapels. Combine that shine with the graphic geometry of many of the clothes, and you got a distinct Art Deco feel. It was explicit in a white crepe gown that brought to mind Deco's Egyptomania. On the other hand, a chartreuse cardigan draped over a striped suit made me think of afternoon tea with Diana Cooper, with a wacky little something slipped into the teapot. A Parkinson moment, if ever there was one.
—Tim Blanks

Tess Giberson

After putting her signature line on hold in 2005 to take a position at TSE, where she remained until 2008, Tess Giberson is back on the fashion calendar. That should please arty, intellectual dressers who in the interim might've turned to kindred spirits like Maria Cornejo or A Détacher's Mona Kowalska. Giberson's comeback collection, which she showed on mannequins and in large-scale photographs at a Chelsea gallery, is titled Superimpose. Her idea, as she explained it, was to break apart the pieces of familiar items and rearrange them. A peplum jacket was patchworked together from thickly textured wool, men's suiting fabric, and felt, while another blazer had tulle panels on the arm. A hand-knit torso and sleeves were spliced onto a fine-gauge sweater worn above a miniskirt with its own knit details, and a dress with an asymmetric neckline was sand-washed silk in front and sportier mesh in back. The show worked because it never felt experimental for experimentalism's sake. Everything was eminently wearable.

After so long an absence, and with such an overcrowded schedule this week, it may be tough for this designer to get noticed. But the girls who've worn Giberson in the past will tell you hers are the kind of clothes that always get a second look.
—Nicole Phelps

Thakoon

Feral. It's not the first word that comes to mind regarding Thakoon Panichgul and his work, but it's an apt one for his Fall collection. First, there were the furs: fox, mink, and raccoon patchworked into a savagely cool jacket, a Mongolian lamb gilet with shoulder-extending proportions, and disembodied hoods. As for his always popular draped print dresses, this time they came in an enlarged and fuzzed-out tiger pattern (the hem of one was even trimmed in multicolored fur to match) or a leopard burnout velvet.

So, is Panichgul over being New York's resident romantic? There was a fairy-tale-like quality to his color palette as it shaded from somber grays and blacks through goldenrod to ivory. But, yes, there was something new about the slightly sinister feel of a Big Bad Wolf blouson jacket in fox and a cable matelassé cape, even if in the end a stretch wool dress densely embroidered with ruffled flowers won the day. Panichgul's experiments with texture pushed him in a new direction. If they didn't always work—pompom embroideries were a bit too cutesy; a peacoat lined in fox, too bulky—it was a small thrill to see him explore new territory.
—Nicole Phelps

The Row

It's not every day that designers brand-new to the runway score front-row coups like Chloë Sevigny and Oscar nominee Carey Mulligan. But then, The Row's Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen aren't your everyday designers. One of the very few celebrity/fashion success stories, the three-year-old label has become known for its subtly luxurious fabrics as well as its understated and classic yet still somehow edgy cuts, both of which were in evidence at the show today.

Backstage, the sisters said, "We wanted to do something low-key and straight to the point." There's no more apt description for their 19-look, entirely black, navy, and white show, which began with a double-face collarless and belted wrap coat, ended with an asymmetrically draped and corseted silk slipdress, and in between featured one of the most effortlessly luxe dresses of the week in matte denim-blue python.

A long-sleeve leather T-shirt, the silk button-down jumpsuit, and a slouchy tuxedo jacket were also among the highlights of the item-y lineup. You could call their aesthetic minimal, but the Olsens say they don't like the description, so here are a couple of others: utterly simple and anonymously chic.
—Nicole Phelps