Tory Burch held her first model walk at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall on Tuesday, the sixth day of spring previews, followed by J. Crew's first appearance at the tents.

Later on Tuesday, red carpet favourite Marchesa was scheduled for the label's debut seated show, at the Plaza Hotel. "It's a lot more work, although I'm not sure why," Burch said backstage, a few minutes before her first model stepped onto the catwalk. "But I love doing it.

Until now, Burch has only done presentations, where models stand still wearing clothes in venues that don't involve a seated audience and lack the drama of a runway. J. Crew has staged other shows, but nothing with the magnitude of moving to the tents that serve as the hub of seasonal previews.

That fact didn't hit Jenna Lyons, the J. Crew president and executive director, until she arrived at the tents on Tuesday morning. "I thought we were just moving our show, but then came the hype and excitement," she said. "I felt excited when I got here - I felt like I was going to the prom."

Marchesa designer Georgina Chapman had some technical problems to solve now that the models would actually be moving. The dresses in the Marchesa collection are usually very elaborate and grand - best complemented by skyscraper heels.

"The situation with the shoes was that they never had to be OK to walk in them," Chapman said by phone last week. "Now we have to make them work with the dresses, and now we have to think of the length of the dresses, too, so the models can move."

Much has remained the same at New York Fashion Week while the newbies settle in. The calendar doesn't change all that much. Vera Wang and Narciso Rodriguez, for instance, always show on Tuesday and stuck to tradition this time around.

Jacobs will close the eight-day run previews Thursday night. Don't forget to turn out the lights Marc! Fashion week moves to London on Friday, followed by Milan and Paris.

Every September the fashion world converges on New York to share designs, impress buyers, attract consumers and predict what people will wear next spring. Reporters Sarah Lolley and Sara Bauknecht are there, and here are their impressions of spring 2012 Fashion Week so far -- it continues through Thursday.

NEW YORK -- One of the darkest days in American history fell in the middle of Fashion Week, when the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11 was solemnly remembered across the country. The Council of Fashion Designers of America planned to not formally pay tribute to the anniversary with a public event, WWD reported, but a handful of designers chose to donate money to 9/11-related causes. Some designers also acknowledged the anniversary during their shows.

Backstage at Lela Rose, the designer felt that featuring color on a day of grays was a way of remembering those who were lost when the World Trade Center collapsed. Ms. Rose began her show in darkness while John Lennon's "Imagine" played in the background and the audience, while not visible, shared quiet tears. By the end of the song the audience sang together without any direction.

Last Friday, the venue's outdoor plaza became a seating area for overflow crowds from a memorial concert held at Avery Fisher Hall. A select number of people who could not be seated inside were offered the chance to watch the performance onscreen outdoors. That afternoon, signs were posted across the plaza offering suggestions for attendees on how to pass the time before the concert, such as by reminiscing on how music helped them cope with the events of Sept.11.

Since the start of Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, a hefty amount of security has surrounded Lincoln Center, where many of the shows are being held. The roads were more sparse on Sunday, and finding a cab from downtown to uptown was challenging to those trying to make shows in both regions. NYPD and NYFD crews heavily patrolled downtown streets, barricading many that led to Ground Zero. As a result, traffic had to find alternate routes to navigate blocked roads. Sidewalks were clogged with people preaching religion, protesting the government, pushing to get a distant peek of the World Trade Center site or just trying to cross the street.

If you Bilt it ...
Renowned fashion photographer Bruce Weber participated in the melee of Fashion Week with a new underwear and T-shirt line called Weberbilt. In the Biergarten at the Standard Hotel in the heart of the Meat Packing District amid the hottest designer stores, Mr. Weber set up a tent with his photography and underwear collection. There wasn't a runway show, but male models such as Ian Mellencamp helped guests choose colors and motifs. The inspiration for the line was to have a bit of fun and to celebrate Mr. Weber's new digital online library.

"When I was growing up as a kid in Pennsylvania, in Greensburg, I was so scrawny and all the guys in gym class looked so good, and I thought, well, I want to make a pair of underwear that even I would look good wearing," he remarked to a tidal wave of admirers and friends during Fashion Night Out on Thursday.

The hybrid underwear has the support of a brief and the legs of a short boxer design. The vintage-style designs, according to a few women who had already worn them, were also comfy and appropriate to wear either to bed or with an ensemble. T-shirts emblazoned with a golden retriever read "Show Me Your Love." The black and white photos that appear on the tees look as if they were taken at an abandoned farm with the dog playing in the foreground. Prices range from $25 for a pair for underwear to $35-$45 for a shirt. The line will be sold on his website, www.BruceWeber.com.

Sites and sounds
The pitter-patter of keyboards and smartphones was the backdrop to much of Fashion Week, with more ways for attendees to integrate social media into their coverage. Social media is motivating designers and labels to generate support for their brands via user participation.

In this new market, designers are reinventing themselves as celebrities and not just artists. While attendance at the shows of Marc Jacobs, Diane von Furstenberg, Jason Wu, DKNY, Derek Lam, Carolina Herrera and Ralph Lauren is exclusive to popular editorial executives and American Express ticket holders, the shows and their revelry permeate news sources such as Twitter, especially the tweets of The New York Times and the Facebook pages of celebrities attending the show. It is a new era of being able to watch the runway shows in real time from your couch.

However, without the garish and glitzy ensembles that Fashion Week attracts to the shows, where would the drama be?

The biggest trend at the tents at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week is the pleated, sheer maxi skirt. From black to orange, fall's signature look is the uniform for the shows' glamorous sect.

Color
Neutrals became the theme of a new decade that began with camel and has segued into a paler form of beige, almost blush. Pantone predicted the colors for spring would be yellow and orange, and that was right.

Also a popular color for spring is white and its many variations. The Olsen twins created an entire white collection for The Row. Yigal Azrouel made his collection simple with white dresses and trenches. Rebecca Taylor began her show with dresses in an oyster hue and then introduced limeade as a sudden pop of color.

Many others, like Doo.Ri and Son Jung Wan, also began with white and then blended color into the collection. Rebecca Taylor's white palette turned to blue with a print on dresses that resembled a beautiful blue, cloudy sky.

Cuchnie et Ochs utilized the colors of lemon and white with showings of pink in its retro yet futuristic line. Candela channeled warm settings, combining olive with tangerine details in the shoe and apparel line. Leaning further toward the silhouettes of "Mad Men," newcomer Honor also used lemon, pink and baby blue in vintage crepe dresses. The peachy side of orange was strong at another new designer, Dean Quinn, as well as show darling Jill Stuart, who combined it with seafoam green. Jason Wu showed off electric lime, coral and blue with fanfare.

Tip for spring: Don't discount navy. It seems to have a place in every collection, from new designer Son Jung Wan to department store stalwart Nautica, and is a workable transition from winter to spring. The classic sailing club favorite featured white and navy-striped tees, navy blazers, slim cotton jeans and crisp white cargo pants and sailing jackets.

Just for men
Speaking of Nautica, to seek out ideas for its spring collection the almost 30-year-old men's line of nautical-style activewear took a road trip up the California coast. Along the way, it must have crossed paths with some seafaring sophisticates, emboldened adventurers and laid-back beach lovers, because that's the energy the spring 2012 collection emitted.

The Malibu division incorporated more color, with eye-arresting neon greens, oranges and caution yellows. Color-blocking provided visual interest to otherwise simple polos. More subdued blacks, indigos and navies came into play in cotton twill trousers and linen and seersucker suits.

Beachy-preppy-cool was the vibe of the Monterey division. More refined looks, such as chambray and cotton oxford blazers, interplayed well with fun crab and seashell prints for bathing suits. Softer watercolors boosted the ocean getaway ambience (www.nautica.com).

Geometry
Geometric designs and color blocking were a major trend. Inspired by architecture, many of the shows like Cynthia Rowley's featured designs constructed to fit a woman and not confine her like a caged corset. By using silk in the creation, exposed seams became mosaics.

Polka dots in various forms were relevant from Pink Tartan's Twiggy-inspired line to rocker organic line Edun. Honor used tiny polka dots in sweetheart and reverse sweetheart necklines on full skirts. Lela Rose put hers against organza in a ball gown with a striped bustier for a dramatic mix of fun, and on the heels of the wedges in her shoe line.

Crosby Derek Lam's more casual collection used color-blocking and variations of stripes, while Eva Minge used her horizontal inspirations in an endless runway show that introduced menswear along with eyewear and bag lines. The show went from comfortable jersey to chiffon gowns in the basement of the Hudson Hotel.

"Fashion fades, style is eternal." This oft-quoted sound bite from the late fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent has never rung truer. We live in the age of the rapid-fire trend, with designers at leading houses churning out more and more collections each year. According to British Vogue, John Galliano, the scandal-beset former creative director of Dior, was producing 32 ranges a year before his contract abruptly came to a halt (after an anti-Semitic tirade in a Paris cafe). With so much fashion, so fast, style becomes more important than ever. For style, although slippery to define, is different from simply wearing what is "in fashion".

Style is the way we put our outfits together, but it's also the way we hold ourselves, the way we deal with others, the way we talk, walk, dance, fight. Those who possess style exude personal flair, panache, that certain je ne sais quoi. Or to quote another famed couturier, Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel: "Fashion is not simply a matter of clothes; fashion is in the air, borne upon the wind; one intuits it ... it comes from ideas, manners, events."

While we might struggle to define it, we certainly know style when we see it. It could be the red lip on a groomed-to-the-hilt Lauren Bacall lookalike, the jaunty tilt of a fedora, or a scarf knotted just so. Some people have style so abundant that it fairly shines out of them; they could wear an Australia Post sack and get away with it. And yet style is not beauty. Indeed some first-class style mavens aren't conventionally beautiful at all – the famed US fashion editor Diana Vreeland had more style in her little finger than the much prettier models she worked with on her photo shoots. Here we ask four Australian fashion players, with very different personal aesthetics, what style means to them, and why it is worth celebrating.

I studied fashion in Perth and in London, then moved to Sydney to work as a fashion editor at Russh magazine. I was still a magazine girl when I started my fashion label, Ellery; I started off small, but I now have a global focus. We're stocked in Myer and shopbop internationally, and I've just been in Europe meeting with British Vogue and shooting our summer campaign in Paris.

Building a wardrobe is something I've been working on for a long time, and I like to think that's what I'm helping other women do with my label. As a woman you do want to look your best. I find I have more self-confidence when I look good. When you break it all down, that's what fashion is supposed to do for people. Thinking about how I dress is an essential part of what I do. Clothes are my livelihood; they are my passion, something I've been fascinated by since I was a child. My mother likes to tell this story about me crying over a frilly polka-dot skirt when I was three. She says it was the first time I made a real fuss about something. I had to have that skirt! I'd never been a brat like that before; it took fashion to bring that out.

I dress up when it's appropriate: when I am going to an event, when I am representing my brand. To the Myer summer show opening, I wore one of our new-season duchess-satin umbrella-back coats with a Céline metal bow collar, a leather top, black cigarette pants and Balenciaga runway shoes that I bought in LA. And of course that's fun – that's part of loving what I do – but there are other things in life. You are not going to die if you don't look chic.

New York may be dominated by memories of 9/11 this weekend, but 80 blocks north of the World Trade Centre site fashion week is in full swing – and the American fashion industry is attempting to balance respect for the anniversary with a need to capitalise on the publicity brought by the biannual event.

A full schedule of shows will be held at the Lincoln Centre on Sunday, but the Council of Fashion Designers of America is encouraging the fashion community to turn it into a day of service as well as a working day. "We thought it was appropriate to support this idea of turning it into a day of positive action," said Steven Kolb, executive director of the CFDA.

The attacks happened during the spring 2002 fashion shows, forging a permanent link with New York fashion week, and prominent American designers including Tommy Hilfiger and Diane von Furstenberg have heeded Kolb's call by donating money to the new National September 11 Memorial and Museum.

Designers are keen to promote this New York fashion week in a positive light as a symbol of the city's resilience. Asked by Womenswear Daily to cite her inspirations for next season Von Furstenberg, whose show will be staged on Sunday, seemed to make oblique reference to the post-9/11 era and the vertical columns of light that are projected from the site of the towers each year on 11 September. "It's called Beginnings. It is all about light and luminosity, hope and happiness … it celebrates a nomadic vitality, strength and resilience in an infinity of variations."

London fashion week, having successfully fought off a land-grab when New York attempted to encroach on a day of the London schedule a year ago, faces an unexpected problem this season as an indirect victim of hurricane Irene. Marc Jacobs has moved his New York show back by three days to Thursday night, blaming delays caused by Irene-related shutdowns. The designer is said to be in the frame for the post at Dior, still vacant six months after John Galliano's dismissal, making his show more of a hot ticket than ever. As a result some editors, buyers and models will not arrive in London in time for the opening day of shows next Friday.

British fashion can be cheered, however, by reports that the Duchess of Cambridge is seen as a key influencer by the global fashion industry. The impact of her seemly, ladylike look is already being seen on the streets of Manhattan, so much so that the lookalikes have a catchy moniker: the RepliKates. "She will influence all markets," Hilfiger said recently, adding that he will be reintroducing matching bags and shoes into this season's collection.

The lack of edge in the Duchess's look has prevented the fashion industry taking her to its heart, as yet – Giancarlo Giammetti, a former owner of the brand, pronounced a recent Valentino show as "very Kate Middleton", a comment the New York Times characterised as "casually blistering" - but she has some powerful supporters including Anna Wintour, who has always shown a personal preference for uptown elegance. Even Karl Lagerfeld, who recently summed up the appearance of the congregation at the royal wedding as "bad proportions, ugly hats, short skirts on fat legs" praised the Duchess's wedding dress as "ravishing."

Other early steers as to directions in fashion for the spring 2012 collections have been intriguingly eclectic. Two very different female New York designers, the uptown Tory Burch and the downtown Charlotte Ronson, are inspired by the 1920s this season. Alice Temperley, the British designer who shows in New York, will pay homage to classic silver-screen beauties, while Phillipe and David Blond took "past bunnies of the Playboy Club" as their starting point.

Architecture is a hot reference among the inner circle of Anna Wintour's favoured designers: Richard Neutra's angular, mid-century Desert Modernist houses in California are in favour with Derek Lam, while Proenza Schouler designers Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez have been looking at the classic Googie aesthetic of the 1950s. Bright, sunny colours were an early theme from the first day of catwalk shows, with sugar pink dresses at Cushnie et Ochs, and electric blue handbags at BCBG Max Azria.

The flamboyant 50-year old Briton was not present in court for the verdict, in which he received a suspended 6,000-euro (£5,200) fine, meaning it goes on his criminal record but he will not pay the fine unless he re-offends within five years.

The Paris court found him guilty of "public insults based on origin, religious affiliation, race or ethnicity" during two separate rows at the La Perle bar in Paris' Marais district. The scandal over the insults cost Mr Galliano his job as creative director of Christian Dior days before the label's autumn-winter 2011 catwalk show in March.

He was later ousted from his eponymous label, also owned by Dior's parent company. In one incident in February, customer Géraldine Bloch said he branded her "dirty Jewish face" and "'dirty whore' at least a thousand times" as she sipped cocktails with her friend Philippe Virgitti. He also targeted Ms Bloch's 'ugly eyebrows' and 'cheap thigh boots" in a 45 minute tirade overheard by several witnesses.

The third plaintiff, Fatiha Oummedour said a drunken Mr Galliano had repeatedly called her an "ugly Jewish -----" at the same bar last October. A video of Mr Galliano again at La Perle was aired in which he is seen saying: "People like you ought to be dead, your mothers, your forefathers would all be ------- gassed. I love Hitler." Cutting a frail, contrite figure in his day-long June trial, he apologised profusely, swearing he had "no recollection" of making the incendiary remarks because of his addiction to sleeping pills, alcohol and Valium.

The presiding judge Anne-Marie Sauteraud, said there was a "web of proof" that he had shouted the abuse in a way which was "audible to the public" and that Mr Galliano had "sufficient awareness of his act despite his triple addiction and fragile state."

But the fine fell short of the maximum sentence in such cases of a 22,000 euro fine and 6-month prison sentence as the court took into account his apology to the plaintiffs during the trial. It also noted the "values of respect and tolerance to which the defendant generally adheres" in his work.

Other mitigating factors were his lack of previous criminal convictions and the treatment for drug and alcohol addiction he has sought since his arrest in Arizona and Switzerland. The judge said Mr Galliano had told the court he chose not appear in person for the verdict to avoid another "confrontation with the press".

In addition to the fines, he was sentenced to pay 16,500 euros in legal fees, plus 1 euro in symbolic damages to each of the plaintiffs and civil parties in the case.

Speaking afterwards, Miss Bloch's lawyer Yves Beddouk said he was happy with the relatively lenient verdict as the designer had already paid a "heavy price by being shamed the world over" for his behaviour.
"The fact that he has lost his status as a fashion icon and artistic director of Dior is his biggest punishment and I think the court understood that," he said. "The verdict will serve as an example."
Mr Galliano's lawyer said the suspended sentence was a "very strong sign" that the court had taken on board his apology and ongoing treatment.

"(He) is relieved these eight months are behind him. He's looking forward to a future with understanding and forgiveness hopefully, and to put all of this behind him," he said.