USA: Designers -- established and new, trend forecasters and organizers get ready for the upcoming New York Fashion Week.

The fashion tents are going up once again at Bryant Park in Manhattan, designers are busy giving last minute touches to their Spring Summer 2007 collections and models are running between casting appointments as the countdown to the beginning of yet another New York Fashion Week draws near. Fashion Week begins this Friday (September 8th) and one of the things that's new this year is the clear fronted main tent at Bryant Park, the steady home for Fashion Week. Traditionally, the tent front has been a solid color -- white or black usually -- but this year people can sort of get a peep into the goings-on in the main lobby, courtesy the use of sheer plastic. Fern Mallis, Executive Director, Seventh on Sixth and Vice President of IMG Fashion, the organization that is behind the New York Fashion Week, said that there is a lot to look forward to in the frenetic fashion days ahead. "I think that this upcoming Olympus Fashion Week everybody should be excited about first of all 80 shows in these tents, which is a record breaker for us. And, I think we are going to see some gorgeous Spring collections, and we're seeing designers from all over the world once again who are coming here to our tents, which are the melting pot for fashion in America," said Mallis. The only thing that Mallis is apprehensive about is of any hurricane blowing by and is hoping the damp weather overtaking the Big Apple abates by the time Fashion Week kicks off at the end of the week. Mallis also said that just as last year, there is a huge effort to make the Week accessible to folks who can't get behind the velvet ropes. There will be continuous, streaming updates, interviews and footage of the upcoming Week available online. Not very far from Bryant Park, just a couple of blocks away, models awaited their turn to meet Luca Orlandi, the designer behind the "Luca Luca" label, which was founded in 1992. Orlandi, who has been in the fashion business since he was a teenager, is known to design women's clothes that have a vintage, classic quality to them. Their texture is often compared to the kind of clothes you might see in old Italian films. Last season, femininity was a major element of Orlandi's designs. This time, Orlandi says the femininity is still there but it has evolved from prior years, and while he hasn't changed his focus dramatically, new emphases have been introduced. "We never change dramatically, but every season is an evolution of the next one. So, this year we really put a lot of emphasis on new volumes and we really tried to create new silhouette, new volumes, kind of forget where the waist is and so much has been going on with this effort that we want to keep the color of the collection very simple," said Orlandi. Orlandi was willing to reveal only one dress from his collection -- a short and white confection with appliqué work -- that he was fitting on one of his models. It had a delicate, almost girlish feel to it. Orlandi said that the color palette for his collection this year is dominated by white and tomato red. He wanted to keep the colors simple as he focused on the silhouette and volume. As for fabrics, Orlandi's team said that that linen and satin were used liberally for the Spring-Summer look. Linda DeFranco, a product trend forecaster at Cotton Incorporated also echoes Orlandi in terms of the emphasis that she thinks will be given to silhouettes in the Spring Summer 2007 collections. "I think on the runway this season, I think kind of take influence what we've been seeing in terms of street wear with the skinny jeans, and more like body conscious silhouettes on the bottom, we'll be seeing that translated into ready to wear. I feel that trousers are going to be more slim fitting, even skirts. While volume was very big trend last season, I think its going to be more body conscious, perhaps a little bit more fluid, and even a little bit more sexy than we've seen in the past," said DeFranco. DeFranco also thinks that fabrics individualized for specific needs and looks will be a popular trend at Fashion Week while the designs themselves will be extremely wearable in general. Apart from all the design and fabric talk, no New York Fashion Week is complete without a gaggle of new faces --- upcoming, young designers. Sophie Buhai and Lisa Mayock, the forces behind the "Vena Cava" label, are part of the neoteric brigade. They believe that one of the attractive aspects of New York Fashion Week is that it is very welcoming to new designers. The two twenty-somethings have been working on their label since they graduated from Parsons School of Design in 2003. As for their Spring Summer 2007 collection, Buhai emphasized the Japanese influence on their designs. "This year we were inspired by Japanism and sort of the influence that Japan had on the West at the turn of the century in art and architecture. So, we were looking at a lot of artists and designers, architects during that time period," said Buhai. In the coming days, Mayock is looking forward to what she hopes will be a more intimate way of displaying clothes. "Looking forward to the most, because of the fact that it is a presentation and not a runway show, and we're actually in the same room with the reporters, and the people from the magazines and the photographers, it's great to actually see their reaction first hand and see which pieces they gravitate towards and how they're looking at things. and you can kind of, you can kind of feel out which things people are really gravitating towards and that's always interesting," explained Mayock. Faded colors dominate their collection, and the color palette has plenty shades of dark hues like brown and navy blue. New York Fashion Week for Spring-Summer 2007 collections will end September 15th and apart from established designers like Oscar de la Renta and Carolina Herrera, will also formally introduce 10 new designers selected to be part of the program, "UPS Delivering Fashion's Future", which gives emerging designers a stage, the spotlight and a chance at capturing attention from buyers.

ITN Source | September 9, 2006

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