Well, here I am, off to see my last show of the season. This is a Gen Art show, featuring Camilla Staerk. Gen Art is an arts and entertainment organization dedicated to promoting emerging talent in fashion. Until this season, they've featured several designers at once. This year, they're switching things up by exclusively showing Staerk's work in continuous twenty minute shows for an hour and a half.

What makes Staerk worth featuring? For one thing, she has a cool attitude. Her approach seems to me more like a painter or performance artist: She makes what she makes, regardless of trends. Below, a short interview with Ms. Staerk.

About.com: "Bride of the Black Moon" has a darker aesthetic than a lot of other collections being shown this week. What influenced your direction?

Staerk: "Bride of the Black Moon" is a character within a sculpture by Louise Nevelson. She and her work have inspired me for this collection.

About.com: One constant in fashion is change. Another is that, in any given season everyone can find some trend or cut that absolutely doesn't work for them. At what point should people just say, "this isn't for me" and leave a trend alone?

Staerk: You should take what you want from fashion, trend or no trend. You should only use trends in your own context to promote your individual style.

About.com: What's always in style? What holds up from season to season?

Staerk: Individual style.

About.com: What is your least favorite fashion trend/direction?

Staerk: Everything is relative. I try not to think about or look at trends ever, but try to focus on whatever direction/inspiration I feel strongly about at the given time.

About.com: What advice would you give to emerging designers?

Staerk: Stay focused on doing what YOU are about. Fashion is a business, but you must always stay true to yourself.

This is hilarious to me: Apparently, we the consumers are to blame for the skinny model trend. And it's getting worse: Now the male models are shrinking as well.

Jezebel quotes Kelly Cutrone (head of PR firm People's Revolution) as saying that designers are "responding" to what men want. All I can say is that they must not know any of the men I hang out with. I cannot imagine a single one of them turning down a meal in order to fit into a piece of clothing.

Meanwhile, all that hoopla from a few years back about how the industry was going to monitor its models to make sure they were eating seems to have fallen by the wayside. I didn't spot any lanugo this year, but I saw plenty of visible spines and bony sternums.

It's interesting: When I started going to Fashion Week a few years ago, I was prepared to feel like a manatee next to the models. Instead, I felt pretty OK. They're so thin, they don't even seem like something you'd want to compete with. In person, some of them are actually quite frightening.

Also, those real guys I mentioned earlier? The ones who won't give up sandwiches to fit in a shirt? I've never heard a single one say, "What I'm looking for is a girl with a bony chest."

Not to say that everything is about impressing guys, but to be totally honest with you, I'd rather have their good opinion on the looks front than a designer's.

...and so true:

Venn diagram courtesy of Jessica Hagy.

Just about this time every Fashion Week, I discover I have nothing to wear.

This is partly because I haven't had time to do laundry for awhile, and partly because once you've spent a couple days around people who have twice your yearly salary to blow just on clothes, your own bargain basement wardrobe starts to look awfully blah. Fortunately, it looks like there will be plenty of pretty stuff to buy in the coming year.

I went into the week expecting the worst. People kept saying we'd see lots of gray and black, and while that was definitely there, I was pleasantly surprised at how much color I saw - pretty color! Color that you might actually want to wear.

Officially, the color of this Fashion Week is blue iris - otherwise known as Pantone No. 18-3943. But I also saw lots of pink and green and gold. No matter what your skin tone is, there should be something to wear next fall. Once the trends shed their designer furbelows - enormo ruffles and peacock feathers and the like - you and I should find plenty to wear at our local Target or H&M.

As a friend of mine says, what women want from their clothes is pretty simple: They want to look younger and they want to look thinner, but most of all, they want to look pretty. If this Fashion Week is any indication, we should look gorgeous this fall.

Halfway through the wait for the Betsey Johnson show I became convinced that someone was going to jack my seat, and more importantly, my gift bag.

Worse, I was sure it would be someone's toddler, and then I would be left to decide if I've really become the kind of person who wants to fight over lip gloss with a small child. (Answer: Tragically, yes.) I justified it to myself like this: What would a two-year-old do with a Betsey Johnson thong?

The clothes were loads of fun, as usual. Later in the day, I sat next to another journalist at the Ports 1961 show and she mentioned that Betsey Johnson is "for high school kids ... not for us." Now, I understand that I might be a little arrested, but I disagree. I think just about every woman can use a good party dress, and that's Betsey's specialty. This year, there was a lot of black, which made for a less Betsey-like show in some ways, but is a lot easier to wear. (Those of us who don't fit into the high school kids group should probably avoid anything super-ruffley. Some of the ruffles in this season's show were like six inches long. That's a lot of ruffle for a grown-up lady.)

My favorite part of the show, though, was the end when they showed some of Betsey's favorite of her clothes over the past thirty years. This was all in honor of the line's thirtieth anniversary, and it reminded me why I love her clothes so much: they're fun.

Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images. Betsey Johnson Fall 2008.

It's been kinda gloomy here under the Tents so far. I've seen a lot of gray, which is usually fine with me - better than fashion's obsession with navy last fall - but I was kind of craving some color. So I was happy to see the Tracy Reese show pop up on my little schedule.

Tracy Reese is known for feminine clothing, which translates to "not just pretty, but wearable by a large percentage of the population." Generally, you don't have to weigh twelve pounds to look good in Tracy's clothes.

I was a little nervous about the show, because I hadn't been totally smitten with the spring line. There were high pants, is what I'm trying to tell you. With buttons on them. Not a good look for me, or I suspect, for you.

The fall show was much better - lots of pretty, flirty dresses, and floaty fabrics that moved nicely down the runway, but won't make the average woman look like she's swathed in a muumuu. Good stuff, all around.

My seatmate also pointed out that there was a lot of pink in the show, and that pink sells well. She's a former buyer, so she should know. All I know is that I'll buy almost anything pink, and I'm not a super girly-girl. I have a theory that it reflects flattering pink light up on your face and makes you look younger.

Also, as it's Black History Month, I'll just mention that I also like that she usually has more than the one token model-of-color at her shows. Usually, designers have about ten skinny white eastern European teenagers, one African-American model, and one Asian model. It's nice to see that statistic turned on its head.

Photo by Mark Mainz/Getty Images. Tracy Reese Fall 2008.

Everyone at Fashion Week has a kid on their lap this year.

Maybe the pregnancy epidemic spread from Hollywood. Maybe the (much lamented among veteran attendees) decision to sell seats to the general public made people a little crazy, and they decided they needed to bring their children. All I know is, by the end of the day, I had pretty much decided that babies had replaced purse-dogs as this year's It accessory.

"Did you see those two twelve-year-old girls in the front row?" my standing-room partner-in-crime asked me during the Sass & Bide show. "Do people really want their daughters exposed to this? Don't they watch Ugly Betty?"

The front row thing irks, I'll be honest. Not like there's a snowball's chance in h-e-double-hockey-sticks that I would have gotten that seat if they'd stayed home and braided each other's hair, but it is annoying. For one thing, most of the kids I've seen so far look severely bored.

Also, there's the fact that it makes getting in and out of the shows that much more difficult. Kids move slower, and with less purpose, and also, I'm terrified I'll step on one. I'm just not used to anyone being shorter than me, so it's tough to remember to look out.

"It's like Chuck E. Cheese on a Saturday in here," my friend said in exasperation. The guy next to us, Dad of the girls we'd seen earlier, gave her a dirty look.

She was embarrassed, and looked apologetic. The thing is, she has kids. They're just, you know, at home. Playing video games and annoying their brothers, like kids are supposed to do.

The Araks/Mara Hoffman show was a little bit different. For one thing, two lines were showing at the same time. This was very confusing for me when I got the invitations. I kept looking at them side by side. Both said 2 PM, in the Promenade at Bryant Park, on February 2. I tucked both into my bag and figured they'd make it clear once I was seated.

Boy, did they ever.

"We are showing two shows today, one right after the other," one of the PR people said over the PA. "No one will be leaving in between shows."

I don't think that was intended as a threat, but I had an urge to bolt anyway.

I'm glad I didn't, even though the first show, Araks, wasn't for me. There were a lot of neutrals and baggy dresses. One model was wearing what looked like the big blue sweater I throw on when the radiator is broken and I'm depressed. Everyone wore big ugly-on-purpose glasses. Maybe I just didn't get it.

In my notebook, I wrote my short-hand of the aesthetic on display: "Does anyone need brown lipstick?" Not me, that's for sure.

The second show, Mara Hoffman, however, was pretty much everything I want in a fashion show: great clothes that most people could wear, neat little details (gray chevrons on black tights!), accessories that make you think, "Why hasn't anyone done this before?" The models strutted down the runway wearing these awesome split handbags that hung from holsters around their waists and looped over their backs. They looked like saddle bags, kind of, and I need one.

Photos by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images. Araks Fall 2008. Mara Hoffman Fall 2008.

Here's the thing about Erin Fetherston: in order to wear her clothes, it really helps if you look like Erin Fetherston.

E.Fethers, in case you don't know, is the annointed hipster goddess of Fashion Week right now. (Not counting that girl from the Misshapes, who was supposedly smiling at the show last night. The other horsemen of the Apocalypse should be on their way.)

Fetherston's clothes are very pretty and girly, and on a hanger (or a model), I think they're adorable. The problem is, they're exactly the sort of thing I'd buy for my niece ... not for my thirty(ish) self. If you have anything approaching a butt or boobs, you will look like a giant preggo in these clothes.

This season was big on the poofy sleeves and flowing skirts, which makes for a gorgeous runway show. In real life, though. I still think most of it is going to make people look huge: "Observe my HUGE skirt and/or sleeves. They match my HUGE person. I am HUGE. HUGE and very hip."

Like, look at that photo over there on the left. I love that dress. Love it. It's beautifully made and it's a gorgeous shape and I love that it's black but has a light sheen, so it's not exactly what you'd expect. However, it would definitely make me look like I was hiding my lunch lady arms. (Because I would be.) You want some very spindly sticks poking out of those sleeves in order to make it work, is what I'm saying.

Erin Fetherston has a line at Target and I'm always looked wistfully at them online, but I don't buy any because I know they'll make me look like I'm in Rosemary's Baby. You know what I need? Tracy Reese to start a line for Target. Now there's something a girl with a shape can wear.

Are you listening, Target? Do it. Talk her into it. I would buy everything. I would buy things that weren't available in my size, just to have them.

Photo by Mark Mainz/Getty Images. Erin Fetherson Fall 2008.

So, it was damp today, and everyone whined about it: in the lines for the show, hanging around in the lobby of the tents, on our little blogs. Also, and this is hilarious to me, I think there were fewer people out than normal. Which means that some folks actually stayed home so they wouldn't get wet. I'm melting, melting!

In other somber news, the fashion industry is a wee bit concerned about this recession we might possibly have coming up. The rumor is that we're going to be wearing a lot of menswear-inspired pieces - women, that is, as the guys are already wearing that - and gray. Sounds very 1930s to me. Glamorous, but sort of shudder-inducing from a "what does this all mean?" standpoint.

All is not bleak, though, claims trend forecaster Jayne Mountford. In today's Reuters article she predicts all this drabness will be "punctuated by pops of rich color in jewel and berry tones and even bright, futuristic shades ... [which are] signs of optimism."

Also, and more importantly - pretty!