Zac Posen gets standing ovation at New York Fashion Week

As a native Manhattanite, the designer Zac Posen was keen to make a big noise at New York Fashion Week. And his decision to line up five Steinway grand pianos along the catwalk guaranteed just that when he showed his autumn collection on Thursday night. Among the crowd were Claire Danes (pictured from let with fellow actresses Rachel Bilson and Joy Bryant) and pop queen Alicia Keys who, like the rest of assembled fashionistas, whooped with delight at his creations and ended up giving Posen a standing ovation.

Even the Wall Street Journal was impressed: "The clothes were romantic, almost Victorian, yet completely modern and urban. Woolen tweedy jackets tossed together with flirty floral silks. This was a collection with full-on attitude and it electrified the room. Even the photographers toyed with the models. When Coco Rocha walked in a scarlet boucle jacket and orchid-colored skirt, one photographer shouted, 'Now THAT's a woman,' causing Ms. Rocha to grin broadly as the audience laughed."

Thursday also saw Calvin Klein's designer, Francisco Costa, reveal his new designs, which attracted the English actress Kate Beckinsale and the model Eva Mendes, who famously posed naked in a television advert for Klein's Obsession fragrance. Unlike Posen's designs, there was an air of recessionary austerity about Costa's collection.

"Dark times call for dark clothes," wrote Colin Bertram for the New York Daily News. "Audience members had to wait until outfit number twenty of the fall collection show before the hue lifted from black to ivory. Perhaps the recession has gone to his head? Then again, Calvin Klein the man was always partial to a little (make that a lot) of black."
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