VERA WANG'S PREP RALLY

Renata Espinosa Renata Espinosa – Tue Dec 14, 2:42 pm ET

New York – Shoppers may have only recently cemented their purchases for the current season's cold weather wardrobes, but fashion designers in New York already have next fall's styles on their minds, and in their showrooms, as they presented Pre-Fall collections to buyers and editors this month.
With customers and retail stores demanding more and more new items, designers like Vera Wang, who showed her Pre-Fall 2011 collection on Monday, Dec. 13, have found themselves on an unrelenting cycle that has them thinking about everything from weave patterns on hosiery to rendering complicated pleats for production nearly a year ahead of when anyone will actually be wearing the garments.
"I'm going down to work on hosiery right after this," said Wang between showing Pre-Fall looks in her showroom. "I'm worried about it for the (February) show."
Wang said that it would be this collection, also known as "Fall I," not the Fall 2011 collection she'll show this February on the runway, that would determine the majority of her fall sales. Pre-fall collections will hit stores in May.
"This is supposedly the biggest collection for us, wholesale," said Wang "Seventy percent or more of fall sales comes with Fall I."
"The show means nothing, literally, in a way," she continued. "That's for editorial."
So it made sense that her Pre-Fall collection emphasized a host of versatile, wearable looks stamped with all of Wang's signatures: a hint of bling, a touch of fur, some wear-under-everything leggings (in this case, leather, for that chic biker-meets-Angelina Jolie tough girl look), layered cardigans and inventive, re-worked menswear influences.
For day, it was sporty school girl, with Wang's take on pleated apron dresses and capelets, gray felt wrap skirts with menswear-inspired pockets or cleverly layered with zippers for a more playful punk look, cardigans blinged-out with jeweled crests and cropped stretch wool trousers. It was Gothic punk preppy, like if the cast of "Twilight" met up with the cast of "Gossip Girl" and started a band.
Wang also pinched the fall staples with unexpected flourishes, adding removable goat fur collar pieces to a sharply cut wool felt coat with leather sleeve panels, or using the same fur to create a textured peplum skirt on a draped shift dress. Blouses with a demure innocence from the front, resembled a laced-up men's shirt from the back.
For evening and cocktail looks, Wang looked to both the glamorous '30s, and the Pop Art '60s, for long, draped silk gowns that begged for a velvet settee and a glass of champagne, to shift dresses that mixed high-collared Victorian fringe and tulle bibs with athletic racer backs, or jet bead fringe and just a whisper of tulle in the hem.
With Wang, it's all in that ability to go all out and make a look completely baroque with a few beaded accessories, a fur shrug, and lots of layered knits, or keeping it as simple as a pair of merino leggings worn with a thin cardigan and a t-shirt - Wang's personal uniform of choice. This collection will please both camps.