By now you must have heard the biggest news of New York fashion week, the enviously tiny private show of living fashion legend Tom Ford’s first womenswear collection in six years. An unabashed denouncement of the current industry obsession with immediate media, Ford invited just 100 top tier fashion editors (can’t imagine why my ticket never showed up…) to a no-cameras/Blackberries/iPhones-allowed viewing of forty or so looks modelled by a handful of his close personal friends, who just happened to include the likes Beyonce Knowles and Julianne Moore. By all accounts it was impossibly decadent and intimate, but also just plain fun, which pleased Ford. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Fashion should be fun.’

You don’t need to tell that to Betsey Johnson. The designer for whom the phrase ‘joie de vivre’ seems invented put on her usual exuberant catwalk-cum-circus. For Spring 2011 she had a cycling fixation going on, which meant one model carried an actual front wheel down the catwalk, another attempted to skateboard, and there was a cheeky recurring ‘ride me’ slogan. As well as biker chicks there were a bunch of English country rose types in pink and white floral dresses and wellies, plus some great voluminous prom dresses.

Marc Jacobs also turned up the fun factor for a decidedly retro collection. The seventies being the era in question, he showed a lot of flared pant suits and Missoni-homage prints in shades like burnt orange, plum and maroon. The disco decade is an acquired taste, and while the clothes looked good on the catwalk, I didn’t find myself actually wanting to wear many of them.

But perhaps the mainline show was an exercise in editorial coverage, because over at his Marc by Marc Jacobs diffusion line wearability was the main draw. This collection ticked so many boxes on the checklist what a woman wants for spring/summer: soft T shirt dresses; punchy citrus colours; fifties skirts that work as well for the beach as the office; jumpsuits; and short shorts – much of them adorned with Marc’s preferred pattern for the season: a bold stripe.

Photos: Style.com, NYPost.com

By Katie Wright

Each season, I think that I look forward to the Marc Jacobs collection as much the rest the next fashion-lover i.e. a LOT. (A couple of weeks ago there were rumours that Marc was ‘over the whole celebrity thing’ and had been street casting for models, so there was added intrigue as to what direction he was going in). And usually I’m blown away by the abundant creativity and beauty on show. But this time round I’m just not sure what to make of it.

Fair enough there are some lovely pale chiffon dresses, and great fur coats, but the midi-length bias-cut skirts and loose blazers in grey tweed that dominated the first 30-odd looks were really quite, well, frumpy. The loose historical references Marc loves to nod to worked wonders as usual (a shimmery velvet damsel-in-distress dress being a case in point) but the only thing that really made me gasp with desire was the pair of see-through rain coats. On the whole, I’m still undecided. What do you reckon readers?

I definitely know how I feel about Halston’s AW2010 offering – it’s brilliant. Halston is a bit like the US equivalent of Biba. It was huge in the seventies and people got pretty excited when the brand reappeared on the schedule of NYFW a couple of years ago. I didn’t really see the fuss before, but this season, with the arrival of new head design honcho Marios Schwab, the billowing disco gowns have been all but replaced by a sharper, sci-fi aesthetic that totally works. Pleated and subtley draped cocktail dresses are augmented with metallic detailing, or beading that resembles circuit boards, and colour-wise muted fawn and teal feature heavily – alongside an egg yolk yellow silk jumpsuit that is pure seventies Halston throwback. Maybe Marios is what Halston has been waiting for.

Also deserving of a mention today is Zac Posen. Just like last season, when the finale flower-strewn sparkling gowns eclipsed everything that had gone before them on the catwalk, Posen’s best AW2010 looks were in the final third of the show. Following a lot of quite dreary sandy brown suits were a bunch of fantastic mini dresses in my most favourite clashing colour combo, pink and red. I want them all.