Fashion Week Off to Rough Start

Blame it on the recession or just plain bad karma, but New York Fashion Week FW09 is off to a rather rough start. Peter Som, who left Bill Blass just a few months ago, managed to pull together a FW09 collection of 16 looks, but he chose to forgo his standard runway presentation in favor of private appointments. Even "worse," a handful of Fashion Week regulars had to cancel (some at the last minute) their FW09 presentations altogether -- see the list of missing persons at New York mag. Of the most known: Patrick Robinson and the Gap, Benjamin Cho, Steven Alan, Sari Gueron, and Sue Stemp.

As for designers flat out MIA? Malo and Thom Browne (the latter chose Europe over NYC this season). Perhaps the most unfortunate Fashion Week story of all comes from newbie Mikhael Kale. According to Fashionologie, the designer “had to cancel his show because his samples were damaged during shipping; he’s remaking the collection for press and buyer appointments in two weeks’ time.” Fingers crossed that it’s only up from here on out.