A clean break

What headlines? For spring, designers indulge their escapist fantasies.

ERIN FETHERSTON How better to escape than to wear a cloud? (Frazer Harrison/ Getty Images)

NEW YORK - Forget the week's headlines about weather disasters, a murky economy, and troop levels in the Middle East. Fashion designers certainly did. In the tents at New York's Bryant Park and other locations around Manhattan, Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week for spring/summer 2009 was an exercise in gleeful escapism. Marc Jacobs, Diane von Furstenberg, and Halston time traveled to a stylistically bolder time. Erin Fetherston and Rodarte had their heads in the clouds, and Nicole Miller went to the tropics. No one, it seemed, wanted to think about the mundane realities of life.

Fashion, particularly New York's Fashion Week, is always based around a singular vision of preternatural perfection and fantasy. But at its halfway point, Fashion Week was daydreaming of butterflies and thumbing its nose at the simple question, "What are the trends for next spring?" Designers played with neutrals, whites, bold patterns, and bright colors - often within the same collection.

"It's about the joy of dressing up," Jacobs told Style.com after his Monday night show.

There was much joy around Jacobs's collection, which was a fantastic glimpse inside the celebrated designer's mind. What's in there? Mary Poppins reimagined for the 21st century. Only one look from his signature collection could realistically be worn to the office. It was cheeky, eclectic, and an exciting departure from his more recent, cleaner silhouettes. Victoria Beckham, who was in New York to show editors her new fashion line, threatened to upstage the entire evening by arriving to the show with a short new coiffure. It's a testament to Jacobs's design that the post-show conversation remained squarely focused on the fashion.

There was a similar element of fantasy in Proenza Schouler's spring collection of over-the-top 1980s looks. It would be difficult to picture any woman strolling into a room wearing the duo's big-shouldered creations, but like Jacobs's collection, the art and craftsmanship of these pieces were completely thrilling.

Even with all the sartorial flitting, by midweek there were a few trends emerging. If spring 2008 was an explosion of color, 2009 could be seen as an implosion. Designers such as Carolina Herrera balanced eye-popping persimmon and teal with plenty of white. Eggshell, ivory, or vanilla - no matter what they were calling it - designers from Derek Lam to Narciso Rodriguez offered a summer white-out. It felt like a collective, cleansing step. After fall/winter 2008 collections that emphasized a mature and grounded perspective, spring 2009 is looking like the naughty little sister ready to do damage control on her bad reputation by slipping into white.

The levity and playfulness of spring is perhaps the only explanation for one of the week's most mind-boggling trends - the jumpsuit. A few designers threatened to unleash this unflattering beast on the world for the fall season. For spring, the jumpsuit was seen in a multitude of materials and colors with varying degrees of success. So far this week, Derek Lam is the only designer to make the jumpsuit look like an article of sexy clothing and not something that should be worn inside a state penitentiary. Calling his jumpsuit a "trouser gown" and rendering it in a buttery shade of camel also helped further the jumpsuit cause.

Underscoring an obsession with dangerous romance and escape to a different era, another unlikely trend emerged: the corset. The appearance of a kooky undergarment worn outside a dress is almost expected of the zany Betsey Johnson, but she wasn't the only designer at Bryant Park who employed its restrictive powers. Peter Som, Isaac Mizrahi, Proenza Schouler, and Herve Leger squeezed models into these body-conscious creations.

A full corset dress may not wind up on the racks at Ann Taylor (and for that, you should be thankful), but the bold step shows that the body-conscious clothing that arrived for this fall is sticking around. The only designer who was brave enough to slip a baby doll dress on his models was Jacobs, when he showed his more affordable Marc by Marc Jacobs line on Tuesday. While many of his colleagues were still toying with 1980s, Marc by Marc Jacobs is already exploring the early 1990s. All of which means grunge can't be far behind.

No 1980s and 1990s revival would be complete without a visit from the vest. Breathe easy, there were no appliqués to be found. But designers like Max Azria, Alexander Wang, DKNY, and Brian Reyes featured vests in a very modern, longer version that was one of the few articles of clothing on the runways that can actually disguise flaws. While Justin Timberlake's William Rast label reminded us what was wrong with the vest (fringe! studs!), Wang showed how to design it properly.

Designers smartly paired their obsession with crisp white by adding touches of black, but not in the fussy jacquard pattern that dominated two years ago. Instead, Narciso Rodriguez and Thakoon borrowed Asian influences and paired the two noncolors in a graphic and minimal fashion.

Even with white, there was no shortage of other colors at the tents. Designers, reflecting a time when the only thing that seems certain is uncertainty, tried bits and bobs of everything on the runway. There were muted shades of sherbet, copper, and champagne, along with marigold, lime green, and Matthew Williamson's trademark shocking pink.

Romance and escape were everywhere, but those who seemed to understand it best were the Rodarte sisters, who tackled post-apocalyptic landscapes in their amazing collection, and Russian designer Alexandr Terekhov, who featured a bold world map fabric in his pieces. He reminded the small crowd at the show that the planet can still be a lovely place, especially from far away.