New York Fashion Week goes on regardless of 9/11 anniversary

NEW YORK - If the sombre memorial ceremony that took place at Ground Zero reflected the general mood in Manhattan, well, it was barely felt in the Fashion Week marquees at Bryant Park.

At the Carolina Herrera show, which opened the day's proceedings, it was business as usual: the celebrity scrum, Hollywood stylists holding court front row and floor-length Grecian gowns in pale pink chiffon pitched at Herrera's starlet clients like Renee Zellweger, who wore one of her designs to the Oscars last year.

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Herrera, who is originally from Venezuela, is the grande dame of ultra-sophisticated American fashion design - so it was no surprise that there wasn't a single item of clothing in her spring/summer 2007 collection that could be described as 'casual'.

Instead, she specialises in translating French 1950s haute couture silhouettes - like the pristine silk jacquard dress with a stand-away collar that opened her show - for uptown women who take their sartorial cues not from Kate Moss or Lindsay Lohan but Jackie O and Grace Kelly.

The closest Herrera got to offering any designs that might be worn away from the red carpet or the charity function were a handful of sundresses: the best of these was a strapless frock constructed from pink and bright orange ribbons that evoked a slightly more louche icon of the 1950s, Bridgitte Bardot.

The young British designer Luella Bartley is the polar opposite of Herrera, and her show on Sunday night celebrated an altogether more rebellious girl.

The Luella woman wears a very loud black-and-white trouser printed with the letters of the alphabet, or shiny pvc jeans and a t-shirt that proclaimed, "Geek!".

Bartley's show, held at the Sony Music Centre, was one of several seen so far that take their references from the neon giddiness of New York pop artists.

Also on Sunday, Diane Von Furstenberg (who has been immortalised by an Andy Warhol screen print), showed tunic dresses with bright prints in juicy shades of orange and lime green that recalled the graphic textiles of Marimekko.

- INDEPENDENT