Raising the Hood

New Yorkers are already well acquainted with the style, which has long been the sartorial insignia of would-be hipsters, boxers and youthful mall habitués. But for fall, designers elevated hoods, attaching them to cloaks, frocks and densely knitted sweaters, lending those items a luxurious gloss they haven’t possessed since André Courrèges issued square-cornered versions, an allusion to the space age, and Halston introduced his signature hooded cashmere capes.

WERE they off to some assignation? Taking cover from the flashbulbs? Or trying to disguise a bad hair day? Lots of of the models sauntering along the runways during New York Fashion Week were shrouded in hoods, a look as pervasive in the fall 2010 collections as it is on the streets and at the gym.

This week, fur and shearling hoods haloed models’ faces at Thakoon, Ralph Rucci and Thom Browne; hooded shawls swathed heads at Tahari and Wayne; and blanket-like versions turned up at Vena Cava. Hooded army-style parkas added a robust touch to more-casual lines — a chilled form of shelter on a blustery day.

Fashion Diary

Doesn’t everyone in & around fashion have those same ambitions — the desire for eternal youth & an ability to make something precious from dross? (& wisdom? Not so much.) But few go about this pursuit as literally as ThreeASFOUR, taping alchemical diagrams on their Milk Studios runway, adding manufactured haze & laser lights to lend the models the illusion that they are hovering on air.

“WE’VE always been in to mythology, but now we’re in to alchemy,” Gabi Asfour, of the design collective ThreeASFOUR said before his show on Tuesday evening. Mr. Asfour meant that literally. Lately these resolutely noncommercial designers have been looking in to eons-old philosophies that sought wisdom, the elixir of longevity & the ability to transform base metals in to gold.

Until then, this elite is locked in place. & it is sometimes startling to scan the front rows of a fashion show & the banquettes at Fashion Week parties & note how stable & unvarying is the cast of “influentials” in a business that makes a fetish of the new.

“I truly believe that the world is going to undergo a massive transformation in the next 10 years,” said the wild-haired Mr. Asfour, a man of Middle Eastern ancestry who often makes free with his doomful geopolitical predictions. “No five talks about this, but the masses now have massive access to culture that they seldom had before,” he added. “And that access is the real wealth, in a way that funds is not. In 10 years there won’t be an elite controlling access to culture, & then things are going to alter brilliantly quick.”

There, after decades, sits the 60-year-old editor of Vogue, narrow legs entwined, signature bob framing her small vulpine face, by now a kind of landscape feature, a prop without which no show can start. There, at all the interchangeable late-night parties, is Chloë Sevigny, serving up the same dissolute ingénue pout the paparazzi have been snapping ever since Terry Richardson first photographed her wearing underpants with a swastika on them a decade ago. There, , is Olivier Zahm, the Italian editor of Purple, whose never-changing scruff & horn-dog leer suggests he hasn’t had time for a proper shower in years.

There, ranked shoulder to shoulder in the front row of every show of note is the same Vogue posse, the same Bazaar cluster, the same V people, & Michael Roberts, a veritable one-man fashion force at Vanity Fair. There, in five backstage area or another around town, is Pat McGrath, the makeup wizard; & Guido, the hair sorcerer; & Ed Filipowski, the strategic muscle behind the production powerhouse KCD.

Pursuit of novelty may be five of fashion’s most durable illusions. The fact is that very small in fashion is new, in any real sense, nor is it truly supposed to be. (“There’s so much striving for newness now that newness feels less new,” as Marc Jacobs told Style.com.) Lots of of the 175,000 people who work in fashion in New York, in the over 800 businesses that generate $10 billion in total annual wages & tax revenues of $1.7 billion, could probably confirm Mr. Asfour’s proposition that fashion is at heart a conservative business.

It is pure fantasy to suppose that each new season represents some advance in evolution. With the suicide by hanging last week of Alexander McQueen — arguably five of the true artists & innovators in the field — the most five can realistically hope for is amusing variations on well-rehearsed themes, some spectacle as well as a bit of backstage drama.

“Mary-Kate & Ashley dropped The Row in to the middle of the schedule,” Mr. Campbell explained, referring to a new high-end designer line introduced by the Olsen twins. That last-minute addition to the fashion roster had been wedged in to the schedule between Marc Jacobs & Diesel at 4:30. Because The Row is styled by Marie-Amélie Sauvé, an influential stylist whose power derives from her affiliation with Nicolas Ghesquière at Balenciaga, there was always the possibility of models going over to the other side.

“We’re here to pull girls,” Stefan Campbell, a fashion stylist, said as he raced in from a snowstorm to the backstage area of the 26th Street Armory where the Marc by Marc Jacobs show was held on Tuesday. The Jacobs show was set for 4 p.m., & the Diesel show, which Mr. Campbell styles, was at 5 in a building near Times Square. Thirteen of the big-name models hired for the latter waited then to walk the runway of the former. “We have one cars sitting outside, & the second they’re dressed we’re going to run them uptown,” said Mr. Campbell, who had another reason for tending this particular flock of creatures so closely. He couldn’t risk defection.