About Those Fabrics

THE final day of Fashion Week felt a bit like a dash for the last plane out of Lisbon, if you know what I mean. Everyone wore very tight expressions. The journalists heading to London were already in the transit lounge. Still, the day’s shows held some delights: Ralph Lauren’s beautifully rendered Deco glamour and subplot of a Chinese retail assault; L’Wren Scott’s Gauguin colors and a pitch, from both Ms. Scott and Francisco Costa of Calvin Klein, for short hemlines. Skirt lengths have generally been below the knees or to the ankles.

To me, the most striking change this season was the amount of innovative fabrics and embellishment, whether it was Oscar de la Renta’s Oriental embroidery and patchwork or Marc Jacobs’s rubber skirts crafted to look sequined.

Left and center: Valerio Mezzanotti for The New York Times. Right: Elizabeth Lippman for The New York Times From left, Proenza Schouler’s American Indian pattern; Calvin Klein’s short hemlines; and Marc Jacobs’s ’50s couture silhouette.

The dominant trend in the last two seasons has been minimalism, with its almost daily upload of camel coats and stiff tunics. At the start of Fashion Week, many designers still appeared to be in that cautious frame of mind, but the collections of Mr. Jacobs, Thakoon, Rodarte, Proenza Schouler and Mr. Costa offered another perspective.

In one way, Mr. Jacobs’s bonded fabrics and synthetics — polyester blouses, fake fur and crocodile — suited his plan for a strict-looking silhouette along the lines of ’50s couture. If you want to make a pair of sailor pants that are so stiff as to suggest an obsessive interest in ironing, then bonded military wool is your fabric. But in another way, these materials extend the creative boundaries. They can be inspiring to a designer. And the weight and texture of them has improved a lot in recent years. Mr. Costa’s collection, which had relatively easy lines, used jacquards, silks and alpaca that had wonderful texture and metallic shine — and, no, it wasn’t too shiny.

There was some discussion during the shows about the heritage aspects of Thakoon, Rodarte and Proenza Schouler. Thakoon Panichgul used Masai patterns and colors; Laura and Kate Mulleavy, of Rodarte, captured the spirit of the prairie in wheat and blue-sky tones, as well as long skirts and high collars; and the Proenza designers, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, remastered the zigzag patterns of American Indian rugs in wool jacquards. Looking to the past is hardly a new thing, but there can be little fulfillment nowadays if you just dust off a historical pattern or dress style — or even if you engineer a new print and throw it on a shirt.

One hopes that the process of looking at traditions — now hugely changed by computer technology — also leads designers to create new fashion. That’s what people saw immediately in the Proenza show: not a nostalgic trip but a model for a different approach.

Video: Cathy’s Horyn’s Fashion Week Report