New York Fashion Week

“They discovered an area on Pluto in the shape of a heart,” said Michael Bastian during an appointment at his West Chelsea office today, surveying his Fall collection’s mood board. “The universe was telling us something—so we just went down the road of astronomy nerds . . .”

Tim Coppens’s latest collection was a tribute to human unpredictability. Coppens didn’t intend that; rather, the meaning emerged from the way he ducked and dodged the expected, usually right at the moment when you thought you’d figured out what he was up to.

How do you get guys to re-buy the classics? That, in a nutshell, was the question posed by Tommy Hilfiger to his team as they brainstormed this season’s Hilfiger Edition menswear collection.

Michael Maccari continued to put his own modern twist on the venerable Perry Ellis brand. His fall show offered “a new definition of sportswear” with updated proportions and silhouettes.

John Varvatos takes the prize for the most creative presentation during New York Fashion Week: Men’s. The designer dismantled his Bowery CBGB’s store and turned it into a fun house complete with corpses in coffins and an array of figures wearing animal masks.

The stage was set before the show started with an opening video of the sea that morphed into a collage of buildings and bridges. This juxtaposition of the water and the city was the inspiration for Nautica’s fall collection, whose new marching order is: “Inspired by the sea, designed in the city.”