NEW YORK – Tweed’s style icons aren’t the most trendy bunch: Sherlock Holmes, college professors, your grandma.\nBut at New York Fashion Week on Wednesday, the fall staple got a makeover: The fabric was sometimes made of unexpected materials, the pattern was not always perfect and the shapes of the garments weren’t always restrictive.\nNarciso Rodriguez made a gray and white tweed so soft it looked like fur. Isaac Mizrahi made a fur tweed gown – about as luxe an interpretation as you can find. And the British designer Matthew Williamson did tweed in an explosion of color with flashes of metallic.\nFashion editors, stylists and buyers also saw previews from Michael Kors, Anna Sui and Justin Timberlake’s William Rast line. Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week runs through Feb. 8, with shows still to come from designers including Marc Jacobs, Zac Posen and Calvin Klein.
Narciso Rodriguez \nThere have been plenty of hard-edge, rock ‘n’ roll clothes on the runway here. Narciso Rodriguez offered the first grown-up version of that look.\nIf it takes a trendy young woman to pull off a black mini shift dress, it takes a chic woman – of any age – to wear a black structured corset dress.\nThis is a look Rodriguez, who is celebrating the 10th anniversary of his label, knows well. All of his signature black-and-white looks will be offered next season: cocktail dresses with clean lines but sometimes complicated straps, pantsuits with skinny-leg trousers and coats with flattering seams.\nBut Rodriguez also experimented with tweed, knits and the occasional bright color. Other trends Rodriguez helped to confirm were exposed zippers, over-the-knee boots, metallics on daytime outfits and feathers – his were peacock on a black wool cocktail dress.
Michael Kors\nMichael Kors knows how to please his crowd. He gave celebrities in the audience a bit of old-school glamour. For his socialite fans, there were luxe furs and skirt suits. And for everybody else, there were great daytime sheath dresses for everyday living.\nKors had the most star-packed front row so far during New York Fashion Week. Debra Messing, Ellen Pompeo and husband Chris Ivery, “Gray’s Anatomy” co-star Eric Dane and his wife Rebecca Gayheart, Sigourney Weaver, Eva Longoria, Pharrell, Natasha Richardson and Angie Harmon all saw Kors’ interpretation of “reel life.”\nIn his notes, the designer said he was aiming for clothes that were “camera candy.” To emphasize his theme, Kors beamed live video footage of the photographers shooting the show onto the backdrop, so the camera crews were seeing an image of themselves in their viewfinders.\n“These were clothes that make celebrities look like movie stars – the good kind,” said Cindi Leive, Glamour magazine’s editor-in-chief.\nThe look was retro – circa the Grace Kelly days of the 1950s – with the female models in tortoise-shell, cat-eye glasses, cardigans and pencil skirts, and the men in slim suits and fedoras.
