Message from NY Fashion Week: Consumer choices

“I don’t think people are just rooting for Gwen,” said celebrity stylist Jay Manuel. “Her style is so spot on, people want to see her mix of rocker and fashion.”

Stefani divided the outfits into six categories. “It’s one collection, but like subcategories, which are always my inspiration,” she said in an interview Wednesday. “We have Ragga girl, we got a soldier girl, we got an English girl, we got a glamour girl, we got a buffalo girl.”

CALVIN KLEIN

When there is such emphasis on tailoring and texture, even the slightest tweak in silhouette matters, and that’s how Calvin Klein creative director Francisco Costa evolves his collections from season to season.

For fall, he’s made his favorite shape a little looser _ sometimes boxier _ with sloped shoulders and a curved collar based on a baseball jacket.

Costa explained in the show’s notes that he was aiming for “youthful exuberance with a sporty vibe and a fast pace.”

An interesting twist on the sheath dress was a garment that looked like a dress from the back, giving women the ease they crave, but a slit just below the hip on the front created the illusion of flattering separates.

PROENZA SCHOULER

Designers Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough used a pulsating makeshift runway in a warehouse to debut a line as homespun as it was urban.

There were masterful macrame skirts and dresses pieced together with exposed stitching, inspired by the American Southwest.

Coats were exquisite. Long dresses with colorful panne-velvet tops and black bottoms work for day, night _ and, for a front-row guest like Liv Tyler _ the red carpet.

“At the end of the show, what I was thinking about was that they always redefine for me what’s right for evening. I was about to go to a dinner and I’m thinking what I’m wearing is all wrong,” said Vogue senior market director Meredith Melling Burke. “All I wanted to be wearing was a Navajo pant and tuxedo jacket.”

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