City Lights

With London finished, Milan about to wrap up and Paris on the brink of opening, I've finally made my way through all of the shows from New York's Fall/Winter 2009 offerings. Usually I slog through them all in one day and am left with a thousand bookmarks to remind my of what I've seen and very sore eyes. This time I took it in fits and starts. It wasn't that I didn't like what was on offer. I did. In fact, I preferred it to last season, but life got in the way a bit more this time around.

Even though it took me much longer to digest everything because of mounds of other bullshit that got in the way, I liked it better than the speed rounds I've done in seasons past. I was able to soak everything in. To live with the photos and really take my time.

But, as with last season, it appears that I can only like collections in twos. There were pieces here and there throughout many of the other shows that I coveted.

The embellished tights at Doo.Ri.

A simple shirtdress at Jenni Kayne.

A slouchy, menswear inspired look at Richard Chai.

The blue patterned dress at Bibhu Mohapatra.

A pair of elbow length leather gloves at Tracy Reese.

But in terms of complete collections that I hope, in some far off fantasyland, will be in my closet come September, there was only Jason Wu and Chris Benz.

Wu's star has rocketed recently for obvious reasons. But I started paying attention to him when browsing through all of the nominees for the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund award last fall. I love a ladylike dress, but I feel like I'm still a bit too young to give myself over to Oscar de la Renta. Wu offers beautiful, classic pieces that won't age me 20 years. This season there were dresses and separates in deep, vibrant colors.

I was a bit shocked by how drawn I was to the Chris Benz collection as I clicked through the images. Even with the touches of metallics and florals and animal print, I wanted to bookmark almost everything. I cycled through several times. And as with last season's Boy by Band of Outsiders collection, I spent far too long remixing the many separates in my head.

And on to Milan...


Photos via