Where Theater Meets the Street : Runway: Students blur the fine line between costumes for stage and clothes for the street.

Sometimes there’s a fine line between costumes for the stage and fashions for the street.

To be original and daring without being theatrical is a designer’s seasonal dilemma. But that rule often eludes fashion design students, who are free of the burden of having to sell their clothes.

This was clear last week at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising’s (FIDM) annual presentation at the Embassy Theater.

It was often difficult to tell where the costume segment of the show left off and the street fashions began. Nevertheless, it was easy to see why the Swiss textile industry selected the school’s graduating seniors to participate in Switzerland’s 700th anniversary by flying them to that country in search of fabric inspiration.

Although Swiss cheeses and chocolates greeted guests before the presentation and $120,000 worth of luxurious Swiss cloth sauntered down the runway, FIDM students appeared to have Hollywood on their minds.

Alan del Rosario fashioned black and white rag skirts that turned into Ziegfeld showgirl outfits; Mark Martin offered multicolored medieval jackets and overly accessorized catsuits (in one outfit the gold baubles actually served as a top); Khaled Khalil designed elaborately embroidered, see-through lace dresses worn with gravity-defying hairpieces, and Chi Sook Christina Lee had Madonna in mind, with her skintight, metallic organza dresses with coil-shaped bra cups and collars.

But it was Lily Cheung, Lynda Cardinale and Young Joo Lee who offered the evening’s most wearable street fashions.

Cheung showed exquisitely made, Grace Kelly-inspired sequined cocktail dresses with ostrich feather-trimmed capes, all in white. Cardinale showed adorable velvet suits for boys and satin dresses for girls.

And Young Joo Lee’s inspired mixing of sequined prints and multicolored plaids on career wear and little black cocktail dresses with mirrored sequins were showstoppers.