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

Hi guys, it’s Katie Wright here, I’m back in position on the Ballad Of fashion blog and for the next four weeks I’ll be bringing you coverage of the Spring/Summer 2011 catwalk shows from the big four fashion capitals from around the globe. I’ll be heading down to London Fashion Week on Friday to catch a few of the shows live, but the rest of the time it’s armchair catwalking all the way,  starting with a round up of a few of the big shows from NYC over the past few days.

Derek Lam provided the first hint that the seventies are going to be making a comeback next summer, by way of flared trouser suits and a slew of billowing peasant dresses and platform shoes. Navy and white also looks like a trend alert, but not in a nautical way for once.

Diane von Furstenberg’s collections are always presented as the contents of the monogrammed holiday trunk of some impossibly glamorous woman, but pulled apart these looks fit straight into the regular woman’s year round wardrobe – if layers of bold tessellating patterns in chocolate and mustard accented with violet, royal blue, turquoise and lipstick red is your thing anyway. And how did Mrs DvF reinterpret her signature wrap dress this time around? Why she cut off the sleeves and added a hood.

A lot of celeb-haters may question the relevance of Victoria Beckham on the New York fashion week roster, but I’m finding it hard to fault this concisely excellent collection of dresses. Losing a lot of the corsetry seen in her previous outings has served Mrs Beckham well, as has a dose of pop art tangerines and purples.

At Halston there was only really one look – a strapless multicoloured sequin dress with pin tucks on the chest – that seemed to connect with the collection that Marios Schwab turned out on the catwalk for autumn/winter 2010. Out went the almost space age minis and in swept a beautifully soft, draped and dreamy interpretation of the brand’s seventies heritage.

Photos: Style.com

By Katie Wright

It’s been hard to keep up with all the action with all the big names over the final two days of New York Fashion week, and it’s only going to get busier with London Fashion Week starting tomorrow. I’ll be down at Somerset House blogging and tweeting my little socks off so be sure to follow @blondekatie on Twitter for snippets of the action from the front line.

Before all that, here’s a mammoth run down of ten more NYFW collections that caught my eye. Not necessarily a top ten per se, but a ten nonetheless.

1. Things were all boyish and blankety to begin with at 3.1 PHILIP LIM. I preferred the liberal use of purple sequins and chiffon trailing out to one side.

2. DEREK LAM’s girls were not to be messed with – they channeled cowboys, indians and the mafia.

3. Possibly my favourite collection of the season so far was one that featured an array of outlandish motifs - giant body-shaped belt buckles, bar codes, breast plates, crucifixes, jewels, gigantic bows and slogans to name but a few. JEREMY SCOTT combined them all to poke fun at fashion – but in the nicest possible way.

4. ‘Goth secretary’ were the words that sprang to mind for me at PROENZA SCHOULER. But in a good way. The scribble-patterned jeans and duffel coats were great too.

5. I love the way that OSCAR DE LA RENTA takes all the hottest models (Coco, Agyness, Karen, Sasha, Freja et al) and makes them over to look like middle-aged women from the eighties with big wavy hair and frosted lipstick, yet they still look amazing. I put it down de la Renta’s timeless clothes. As luxe, glamorous and expensive-looking as ever.

6. NARCISO RODRIGUEZ takes the cake for craziest head gear of the week. Nice asymmetrical dip-dyed sci-fiesque dresses too.

7. The highlights of VERA WANG’s collection for me were the adorable gothy princess dresses.

8. MARCHESA also nailed the goth-princess look, and took this season’s fixation on body art in a beautiful new direction.

9. The least practical and wearable (at least outside of the A-list lifestyle) aspects of REEM ACRA’s collection were also the most desirable – a coat full of holes and the oh so shiny and wonderful full-length gowns.

10. I don’t know much about MILLY, but I know this Parisiene beret and ubermini combination is a winner.

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.

NYFW continued apace on day four with more of the big hitters (Carolina, Marc,  Calvin, more from Donna). We’ll get to those later, but  first here are a choice selection of note-worthy names and what they’re up to for Autumn/Winter 2010.

Cynthia steffe – It was a veritable school disco with Steffe’s girls  in a variety of uniform-grey and monochrome pinafores and mini-kilts.

At Lacoste, the obligatory sporting whites were out of the way it was a glorious riot of smiling models in colour-blocking brights. Practically everything was cropped – sleeves, tops, hems, you name it.  Great asymmetrical cloches too.

Managing to merge the 1890s and 1990s, Julian Louie’s minimalist Victorian dresses came with either long sleeves and ridiculously short skirts or mega high necks and no sleeves. A simple but effective equation.

Helmut Lang: T-shirt with wolf. Need I say more?

Ohne Titel explored a dark military sensibility throughout.

The spectrum of mismatched slighty grungey looks at Gary Graham was wide, but were all paired with mega high platforms.

Elise Overland went hell for leather. And velvet. And er human hair?

As usual, Victoria Beckham didn’t break much new ground, but she knows the value of keeping things simple and I’d happily take all 26 of these frocks for myself.

By Katie Wright

Two grand dames of New York fashion were on the menu on day three, and displayed some of the most wearable and desirable clothes we’ve seen all week.

Oftentimes, DIANE VON FURSTENBURG seems to pinpoint a location with a collection, rather than a specific era or aesthetic, and while last season the giant sandy backdrop was an obvious clue to travel abroad, for Fall 2010 the oil slick-black catwalk denoted that she was firmly back in the city. Diane’s girl this season is an urbanite who likes to mix and match boyish separates in skyscraper colours with flippy, flirty dresses. She also loves to play with texture – velvet here, leather there, and, when out on the town,  plenty sequins and shine.

Donna Karan has always had a knack for appealing to the city-dweller, and this year’s DKNY outing was no exception – almost every piece of this autumnal-toned collection could slot ideally into the wardrobes of girls and women everywhere. Her trademark drapey-clingy dresses were giving a Cubist makeover, and there’s a coat for every occasion – pea, duffel, gillet, boxy blazer – plus Karan’s interpretation of the emerging tartan trend was spot on.

By Katie Wright

After the endless catwalks that are so monochrome they don’t even need to be photographed in colour, Peter Som’s Autumn/Winter 2010 collection was a blast of fresh air today. And it was a blast from the seventies, signified by busy psychedelic prints, silky floral dresses and lots of lemon and lime.

Volume also came in the form of fluffy furry gillets and coats, but was kept in check with tight belted waists. So New Yorkers will be glad to know that if  there’s a repeat of ‘snowmageddon’ next year (and Londoners for that matter; the city ground to a halt with the arrival of a couple of inches of the white stuff in January) then Som has plenty of sartorial solutions - even snoods managed to look chic on his runway, as did cloche hats by Albertus Swanepoel.

The other top picks from NYC Day 2 were Brit duo PREEN and native of Chicago, CYNTHIA ROWLEY.

Unerring in their ability to superbly subvert sex appeal, tight PREEN dresses combined high necks, long sleeves and low hems with carefully placed cut-outs revealing peep holes of skin, lace and black gauze. Some went even further as the ratio of flesh to fabric was decidedly top-heavy. One particularly fetching look added a tailcoat to a floral negligee – it was like a naughty public school girl’s walk of shame.

A limited range of black, white, cream and a few purples were the themes that unified this collection of two halves, as all the body consciousness was counter-balanced with boyish tailoring of wide-leg trousers and and loose lines.

Photos: Style.com

Perhaps CYNTHIA ROWLEY got caught up in hype surrounding her home town’s bid for the 2016 Olympics as the Chicagoan’s collection had enough sports-inspired looks to keep Team USA in medal-winning kit for winter.

Aside from clingy sportswear, the other big story of the show was texture, via grass skirt fringing, oodles of ruffles and puffed silk. A base of black and monochrome abstract print was augmented with flashes of brightest primary colours and sometimes all-out rainbow spectrums. A special mention must also go to the shoulder bags with thick hoover-cord straps. Top to toe, it all looked like so much fun to wear.

Photos: Style.com

Also a quick shout out to this amazing dress that I almost missed from day one, by PORTS 1961. It’s like melted chocolate poured over the model. Divine.

Photo: Style.com

Lynn Devon presented a chic Parisian girl’s wardrobe. From a classic superslim cigarette-pant suit:

                                  

While Vena Cava took us back to the 80s, complete with fish nets and sunglasses indoors.

Photos: Style.com