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A look to last

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Times Staff Writer

Three days after Marc Jacobs shook up Fashion Week here with his collection of lopsided little girl dresses and super-sized cocoon coats, he is still the talk of the town.

“It’s one of the only shows all week that I’ve had an emotion about,” said Michael Fink, Saks Fifth Avenue’s senior fashion director. “People keep saying nobody will wear the clothes, but the gallery girls will,” he said of the city’s artsy types.

“I think it was trying too hard,” said Neiman Marcus fashion director Joan Kaner, who added that “she wouldn’t bet on” the overly styled shapes being reined in for retail.

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“A lot of the shapes and colors looked difficult,” said EBay fashion director Constance White. “But in a few seasons, other designers will interpret the look more commercially.”

The show was, as they say in the business, “directional.” But it wasn’t salable, the flip side of the fashion equation, which may seem important to the buyers holding the pencils now. But in the long run, it’s more valuable to the designer to cultivate an image as a leader, because that can translate later into T-shirt, handbag and fragrance sales, the bulk of the fashion business.

“History has shown that you can take a leadership position and water it down, whereas the reverse is not always true,” White said.

Speaking of leadership, Zac Posen positioned himself at the top of New York’s fashion food chain with one dynamite show Thursday. Known mainly for evening wear, this season Posen gave his pretty young things (model Lauren Bush, Natalie Portman, Claire Danes) some dramatic day wear too. A high-waist pencil skirt with a sweep of pleats diagonally across the front was paired with a puff-sleeve snakeskin-print blouse for a vaguely 1940s look. Skinny, cropped gray trousers were worn with an oversized shawl-collar jacket in the same fabric to make an interesting-looking suit.

A hooded, navy alpaca jacket, finished with two sharp points in back, was a kind of haute version of a Patagonia fleece, which a young woman today would think nothing of throwing over a pleated, silk green skirt and heels. All of Posen’s fabulous dresses were there too, including one in purple silk draped around the body and edged in tiny pompoms, and another in green moire with Posen’s signature seaming that traces figure eights on a model’s figure.

Narciso Rodriguez, on the other hand, may be resting too comfortably on his signatures. That’s not to say his collection wasn’t impeccable. Double-face wool dresses in black, white or poppy were contoured, sliced and slit as only Rodriguez, who looks at the body from an architectural perspective, could. Fitted bolero jackets were cropped to just below the bust and layered over long shirts, and coats were pieced together and seamed like a dream.

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As always, his gowns seemed informed by a study of women’s bras -- those with racer backs, with spaghetti straps, the kind Grandma wears with the extra-wide support strap in back. Though he added a shock of raspberry and emerald green to his typically black-and-white palette and experimented with a bit of caviar beading, the collection held few surprises.

Another round of body-conscious dresses and coats is sure to please his loyal customer base, including Jessica Seinfeld, who was in the front row, but Rodriguez has the skill to do more.

After several seasons of mixed reviews, Calvin Klein’s successor, Francisco Costa, seems finally to be comfortable in his own skin. The collection he showed Thursday was one of the most modern of the week -- grown-up and free of ladylike nostalgia. Unlike most other designers here, Costa turned down the volume and instead played up texture and pattern, with sequins crisscrossing a fitted black cashmere cocktail frock, and a mink coat sheared into a checkerboard.

Patent leather strips were woven into a cashmere skirt, while a sophisticated pantsuit came in a patchwork of pinstripes. A Calvin Klein show is the only place where the names of colors in the program notes can elicit chortles. Among this season’s offerings were a “birch” patent leather, double-breasted jacket (beige, it turns out) a “chervil” gown with a patent leather and organza grid bustier (mossy green), a “citrine” satin, funnel neck coat (yellow to the rest of us) and a nest-like feather and organza skirt in “eclipse” (one of a thousand Calvin Klein grays).

Michael Kors has never been a risk-taker. Indeed, he is the definition of salable. This season, he created a wardrobe for his beloved Park Avenue thoroughbreds to wear skiing in Park City. In his safe, all black, white and red collection, there were lots of 1950s taffeta circle skirts (they’re everywhere this week) paired with racing stripe sweaters or strapless cashmere bustiers in snowflake patterns, and chunky black pumps with the red lacing found on hiking boots.

Among the red carpet-worthy looks: a white strapless gown with crystals in a cross-hatch pattern that brought to mind bird tracks in the snow, and a short sequin jacket dripping feathers like tiny icicles. And really, who doesn’t need at least one pair of taffeta ski pants for the party season?

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One of the strongest themes for fall is East meets West. So, now that everyone is doing the ethnic look, British designer Matthew Williamson, who is known for it, has a lot of competition. Still, his collection stood out with a vibrant patchwork dress, a gold jacquard coat, cashmere sweaters with jeweled epaulets and a show-stopping gown covered in swinging gold beads.

Behnaz Sarafpour’s journey paled in comparison. Such simple pieces as a bib-front Lurex tunic, a cotton skirt with a few rows of colored tassels and velvet shift with silver coins on the hem did little to inspire one to pay designer prices.

The other news this Fashion Week is about romantic deconstruction and distorted proportions. Jacobs’ collection was the radical example, but French designer Roland Mouret -- rumored to be in line for the top post at Givenchy -- offered a take that was more screen siren than little girl. Mouret has been dressing lots of starlets lately, so he probably had them in mind when he created 1940s jackets and trumpet skirts in Prince of Wales check, tailored to within an inch of the models’ lives, with asymmetrical draped collars, elongated peplums and other off-kilter details.

But they didn’t change the fact that the cocktail dresses in jewel tones with short puff sleeves and severe square collars, elegant though they were, were tight-fitting even by Hollywood standards. Nobody wants to hobble down a red carpet.

Vera Wang tried her hand at a messier, more naive look too. A man’s cardigan was tied with a jeweled ribbon belt over a black taffeta empire-waist gown. A gray tweed skirt with a rumpled hem actually looked wearable topped with a green velvet jacket featuring a fluted, stand-up collar. Accented with kooky fur bonnets, the show was part “Little Women,” part Prada fall 2004, but altogether lovely.

And then there was Trovata, the label started by four surf-loving college buddies in Los Angeles, which hosted its first New York presentation amid the mahogany and oil paintings at the National Arts Club in Gramercy Park’s Tilden Mansion. (A plaque outside boasts that the first members included Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt and Frederic Remington.)

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The fashion installation featured male and female models in Trovata’s quirky brand of prep -- a heather wool cardigan with mismatched colored buttons, a pleated school girl tweed skirt, a Kelly green corduroy blazer, khaki pants with floral belt loops and Vans sneakers. The models worked jigsaw puzzles, played cards, sipped cognac and tried to blend in with the guests.

But not everyone was amused. As an older, gray flannel-wearing couple tried to maneuver through the stilettoed crowd clogging the club’s stairs, the female half sniffed, “We’re not fashionistas, we’re members.”

Guess we know who won’t be buying a fur bonnet this fall.

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