Marchesa, inspired by Sargent's portraits

Many designers get inspiration for their fashion collections from the art world. This season, Marchesa designers Georgina Chapman and Keren Craig chose the art of famed American portrait painter John Singer Sargent, who died in 1925, to inspire their always sumptuous, red-carpet ready designs. "Each girl is going to feel like her own portrait ... so we have different characters weaving through the collection," Chapman said in a backstage interview. "But they all tie together, they are all glamorous, ethereal, a Marchesa woman." Specifically, the designers were aiming at capturing "the ultra-feminine strength " of the women that Sargent painted, and as always, the dresses and gowns were nothing if not ultra-feminine.

There were sleek, fitted silhouettes as well as princess-style gowns. There was lots of lace and intricate beading, of course, and brocades and silk flowers. There were, as the designers described them, "pops of color," for example a dramatic red-to-black ombre tulle ballgown with a tiered skirt and laser-cut organza flowers. There were more casual cocktail dresses too, such as an amethyst-to-lilac ombre fringe dress with floral beading. On the more fairy-tale side of things, there were a few dresses in filmy pastel tulle, such as a duck egg tulle Grecian gown with billowing sleeves. Besides the ornate beading, the designers made use of feathers, too, as in a dusty blue ostrich feather cocktail dress with an organza sash. With the Oscars coming up soon, the designers have yet to find out if their designs will make their way to the red carpet. "We hope!" they both said in unison.

A feather fest at Michael Kors

If you had to pick one adjective to sum up Michael Kors' latest collection, a good bet might be "feathery." The designer was going for "the flirty freedom of things that move," to quote his production notes, and there were flirty feathers on at least 10 of the looks he sent down the runway - starting with feathers adorning a pair of jeans, and moving to feathers on a houndstooth tweed coat, on a denim or tweed skirt, and on black silk for ultimate evening effect.

There were also plenty of sequins, adding a very bright sheen to some of the fashions, especially a silver sequin embroidered "streamer" dress, with the hem cut into strips that indeed looked like streamers, and also a pair of seriously glistening silver metallic stretch tulle pants. Kors always has a healthy celebrity contingent at his fashion shows, and Wednesday's event was no exception: Blake Lively and Jennifer Hudson were among the front-row guests. They were there to witness an anniversary of sorts for Kors. "I'm not one for anniversaries and I'm really not a big kind of looking-over-my-shoulder kind of guy," Kors said in a backstage interview. "But when I started designing this I realized, oh my God, this is my 35th fall collection. That's crazy!"

Kors added that as he reflected on the milestone, he realized the most important thing was to keep his fashion fun. "I wanted this to be full of fun and charm," he said. "So it's very flirty, short, leggy, not a gown in sight. All the rules are broken because stylish people break the rules ... The seasons are crazy anyway. So when the weather's terrible, don't you want to put on a fabulous apple green coat to change your spirits? Don't you want to wear tweed with flowers? Don't you want to put feathers on flannel? Wear flats at night? Wear metallic for a day?"

Lively had brought her mom along, a former model who, the actress said, used to make clothes for her kids when they were growing up. "It's so nice," she said of attending a Kors show as a fan. "You sort of like high-five everyone when a great piece comes out, which is often. I'm excited to go hug him backstage afterward."

Sophomore season for DKNY's designers

Dao-Yi Chow and Maxwell Osborne are two pretty happy guys. The Public School founders unveiled their sophomore season as creative directors of DKNY after two fashion-week rounds for their own brand. And they had some fun. The two used bright red shoe laces for lace-up detailing worthy of a '90s club on red and black satin skirts and dresses. They rocked out a nice red plaid for dresses, coats and jackets, and they warned the world: "Don't Knock New York" on a black sweatshirt as they played with messaging like their predecessor and mentor Donna Karan did years before them. One of their outfits included: "Insert Logo Here."

So how does it feel to have all that behind them? "Yeah the pressure's a bit off," Osborne said in a post-show interview of their second DKNY collection. "We had to get the first show out of the way for us to feel comfortable, get situated, feel everything out." As they did the first time, they turned men's suiting into something else, cropping pinstripes for jackets, jumpsuits, shorts and trousers. They hung some oversized looks on straps with tails that fluttered down the runway. And they took "puffer" to a new level in jumpsuits and monstrous scarves some models wrangled as they walked. The two felt loose, figuratively and literally, having in their minds the sexy tomboy bands of the '90s, along with their own New York City childhoods of the same era, especially in the heavy rubber-souled boots in black and brown that likely made their models just as happy as the designers.

"We wanted to play with those ideas of reappropriation that we had back in the 90s, of taking things that didn't necessarily belong to us or maybe fit in a city landscape. We wanted to inject that back into the collection," Chow said. So about that one sweatshirt: Are people knocking New York? "All the time," Osborne said. "They do it all the time," Chow agreed.-AP