FORTY AND FABULOUS

No, I don't mean me. I'm talking about the first shows.

I feel elated about the start of fashion week. Designers like Nicole Miller, Kimora Lee Simmons and Max Azria for his BCBG line, who usually appear lost in a blizzard of commerciality, contributed to a rousing, creative start.
 
Sitting stage-side at the Baby Phat/Kimora Lee Simmons show was spiritual fashion guru Russell Simmons.  He slipped a bracelet of polished green prayer beads on my wrist, maybe we were all to pray that Kimora would have a good show -- no panties, no breasts, no incomprehensible fabulosity, no filmy Christian LaCroix references.  Well, faith believes all things. She did.
 
Simmons, Miller and Azria's collections were surprisingly sophisticated and grown up with touches of Fortuny pleats, toga dresses, strapless dresses and plays on masculine/feminine. The Forties, reminders of when women were strong and grown, make it easy to make clothes that are simultaneously glamorous and serious.
 
A new guy in town, Brit Jonathan Saunders, brought over the kind of gloriously precise and eccentric style (replete with Forties references too) that put Alexander McQueen on the map. The color block Christian Louboutin shoes will have shoe fetishists in a tither.
 
BCBG, intent on cornering the celebrity market, managed to get every cute entertainer under 30 into their clothes and front-row at their show. Everyone from singing cuties Joss Stone and Amerie to young actresses Sophie Bush and Alyssa Milano checked in.