A Valvo spokesman says the cost was "about half" that of a runway show in the Bryant Park Tents.  The tab usually starts at $100,000 and can run $250,000 or more, depending on how many models and special effects are involved. This was perhaps the flashiest example of how designers, hit hard by the recession, are seeking more sponsorships to finance their New York shows than in the past. Check out this video of the Times Square show, which ran on the neon signs of Nasdaq, Thomson Reuters and Fox:
    
  Even with gold trading above $1,000 an ounce, that's still less than what some of Valvo's gowns go for at  Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue.
   The World Gold Council's Duvall O'Steen said the group paid 10 models and other show expenses -- the first time it's taken such a high-profile role at Fashion Week. Check out this video as O'Steen talks about fashion and gold jewelry:

       In fact, the World Gold Council is getting more requests now for corporate event sponsorships than it can accommodate, O'Steen said. And it's happening after a year when a drop in world gold mining production curbed its budget for such affairs.
        Bruce Aust, Nasdaq's executive vice president of the corporate client group, also explains why the made its first foray into fashion:

     Michael Quintanilla, who covers fashion for the San Antonio Express-News and two other Hearst newspapers, told Reuters: "Times Square was the perfect place for a fashion show. With all that neon, it's very 'Blade Runner.' I loved the format. You could drop in when you wanted, have a cocktail, talk to Carmen, see the clothes and leave, without being herded into a space like cattle and being forced to wait."

         What's next? DeBeers Presents Dennis Basso?

Reuters Photo by Yuriko Nakao

Designer Vivienne Tam's"Butterfly Lovers" digital clutch laptop from Hewlett-Packard made its debut on the runway with her Spring and Summer 2010 collection. Just inside the entrance to the Bryant Park Tents, a hummingbird was ready for its close-up -- on the cover of one of the Palm Pixi Artist Series limited-edition cellphones on display.

Just two of the most colorful examples of how fashion is using technology to court design-savvy customers, one of the biggest trends seen at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, which wrapped up late Thursday night.

"For me, fashion plus technology equals 'double happiness,'" Tam told Reuters backstage.

Indeed, the "enter" key on her latest HP laptop is imprinted with the Chinese characters for "double happiness."

The champagne-gold laptop will have more capacity and more features than her first limited-edition HP digital clutch with the red "Peony" print cover, which Tam unveiled on the runway last September. The "Peony" laptop -- light enough for a woman to carry like a clutch evening bag -- has 1 gigabyte of RAM, according to the Neiman Marcus online catalog, where it's listed "in stock" for $699.99.

Tam says her inspiration came from the classic Chinese love story, the "Butterfly Lovers," who are regarded as China's "Romeo and Juliet." A classical music lover, Tam noted that this year is the 50th anniversary of the Butterfly Lovers Concerto.

HP sees fashionable tech for women as a golden market, with plenty of opportunity to expand with wireless mice, storage devices and other accessories, says Satjiv S. Chahil, senior vice president of global marketing.

Check out this video of the "Butterfly Lovers" laptop on display at the Fashion Week party in Vivienne Tam's boutique:

Meanwhile, Palm aims to serve fashion-conscious men and women with its Pixi Artist Series phones with limited-edition covers designed by five artists. The Hummingbird cover by artist Cole Gerst in bright orange and green on a light turquoise background looks unmistakably feminine, while the Skull by artist Jeremy Fish in cream and black appears more in sync with a male aesthetic.

The new Palm Pixi phone line will be launched for the holiday season in partnership with Sprint Nextel, says Palm senior product manager Mike Akamine. Each artist's design will be offered on only 5,000 phones -- for a total limited run of 25,000 units, Akamine told Reuters.
Each phone will have about 7 gigabytes of available internal user storage.
Check out the Palm Pixi Artist Series phones:

http://www.palm.com/us/products/phones/pixi/artist.html

For a look at another designer using tech to reach more customers, check out this video of Norma Kamali showing her spring clothes outside the Apple store in Soho:

Take a look at Reuters story:
Technology in starring role at New York Fashion Week
http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE58H4TD20090918

Just in time for Father's Day shopping, Sears will roll out a line of men's suits made of the first high-tech fabric that blends wool with polyester spun from recycled plastic soda bottles.

The suit separates, sold under Sears' Covington Perfect brand, will be on racks in about 500 U.S. Sears stores in May.  Price: $175 for the jacket and $75 for the pants, according to Tim Danser, vice president of marketing for Bagir Group Ltd., the Israeli manufacturer that tailors the garments for Sears' private label.

And get this: This suit is machine washable and can be tossed in the dryer, eliminating the need for dry cleaning and upping the eco-friendly ante, Danser said.

"This isn't the polyester of the 1970s," Moses Cohen, sales and marketing manager for N.I. Teijin Shoji (USA), Inc., the New York arm of Teijin, the Japanese chemical company that makes the suit fabric, said during a men's fashion briefing at the swanky Kitano Hotel on Park Avenue in Manhattan.

Teijin, which developed fabrics made of recycled plastic blended with wool, viscose and cotton or with other synthetics, also partners with retailers to recycle used polyester clothing back into fabric and new clothes.

"This has a nicer hand to it," Cohen said, running his fingers over the sleeve of his own jacket, acknowledging that "polyester still has some bad connotations" due to the quality of the "disco era" fabric of more than 30 years ago. (For devotees of the 1981 cult comedy film, "Polyester," this is your cue: Thanks a lot, John Waters!)

"We do not use any oil," Cohen said of the process used to turn plastic bottles made from polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, into fabric yarn.  In Japan, men's suits from Teijin's recycled fabrics are sold by retailer Aoki.

"We think the stars are aligned for this," Cohen said, referring to the growing interest in green manufacturing in the United States. "It started with Al Gore and his film, 'An Inconvenient Truth.'  We can also thank President Obama" for his emphasis on saving energy and protecting the environment.

So how did Sears, known for its Energy Star home appliances, decide to join fashion's green front?

As Cohen recalled, Sears was the first retailer to "have the guts and the vision" to commit to the line.

"In addition to providing a handsome suit at a great price, men can feel good about their purchase, knowing they are taking a step towards helping the environment," a Sears spokeswoman said in an e-mail.

The suits tested well in Sears stores in Boston, Chicago and the metropolitan New York area (hello, Hackensack, N.J. and Long Island) -- the three top U.S. eco markets, Bagir's Danser said.

Fun fact: It takes 25 plastic soda-pop bottles (2-liter size) to make enough polyester yarn to produce the fabric for one suit.

(Reuters photo)

Rosemary Ponzo, a New York stylist and hat designer for movies and TV shows,  attracts photographers from her perch on or near the front row of designers' shows in the Bryant Park tents.  Just before the start of the show by the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, Ponzo talked with Reuters about her favorite designers, Comme des Garcons and Junya Watanabe.  

Feathers were so big at New York Fashion Week, which wrapped up on Friday, that it makes you wonder if the Audobon Society will cry "foul" -- er, "fowl." Preppy New York-based designer Tory Burch, known for her colorful Reva ballet flats,  will go edgier for fall with a spiky black feather choker.  She unveiled the piece for us before her trunk show this week for American Express cardholders, who also got personal shopping advice from Bergdorf Goodman's fashion director Linda Fargo.  Australian designer Toni Maticevski, who created Sheryl Crow's long blue gown for the Grammys, liberally sprinkled sequins and feathers throughout his fall runway collection. That drew a rave from celebrity stylist Kithe Brewster.

 "What I love about Toni is that he doesn't hold anything back," Brewster said backstage after Maticevski's show downtown in the Altman Building, once the home of one of New York's poshest department stores.   

Black is back in a big way because "it's practical," New York designer Francisco Costa told Reuters after his fall Calvin Klein Women's runway show at New York Fashion Week, which ended on Friday. Black is also among the "in" colors for gowns on the red carpet this year and will very likely make a major appearance at the Oscars on Sunday. Kate Winslet already has been showing a penchant for black during Hollywood's awards season.

Actress Kate Beckinsale, in a skintight black leather dress, was among the celebrities who packed the Calvin Klein showroom this week to see Costa's fall collection of  tailored coats and sculptured dresses. Many had asymmetrical hems. The horsehair boots and shoes featured high rectangular heels that were open in the middle.

Vogue's editor at large Andre Leon Talley said after the show: "It's hard to do an almost all-black collection, but he pulled it off! These are clothes for women who have some place to go and don't want to look like everybody else."

Costa talks to Reuters below:

"I loved the knits, and I absolutely loved the hats," Ross said in a backstage interview after the runway show on Sunday afternoon in the Tent at Bryant Park in midtown Manhattan.

Knit cocoon coats, flowing sweater jackets and knit dresses over "sweater pants" were topped off by traffic-stopping hats, distinguished by huge piles of pompoms in outre color combinations of brights and dark neutrals (red, pink, orange and black, for instance.) The clothes looked like they would travel well and give women some versatile options for cold weather.

The fall 2009 look marked a distinct departure from last year's fall/winter collection, when the designer's inspiration was "film noir" glamor evoked by 1940s menswear blazers and slip dresses.

Velvet popped up on the DvF runway in surprising places, lending comfortable elegance to her iconic wrap dress, which became a best seller in the 1970s and established Diane von Furstenberg as a major name in American fashion design.

"I loved the velvet, too," said Ross, who shot to fame with the Supremes in the 1960s when Motown hits became part of the soundtrack for the civil rights movement. After that, she launched a solo act that still sells out major concert venues.  Ross, with her curly black hair flowing long and wide around her, was swarmed by photographers before the show began when she took her seat on the front row.

After the models paraded single file to signal the end of the show, von Furstenberg walked the runway on the arm of creative director Nathan Jenden. Then she broke into a little dance as music director Michel Gaubert pumped the house full of the voice of Diana Ross singing one of her greatest solo hits, "Upside Down" from 1980:  "Upside down, boy, you send me, inside out, 'round and 'round ..."

 (Reporting by Jan Paschal, Photos by Lucas Jackson/Reuters)

 Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, famous for her chilly demeanor, surprised the black-tie crowd at amfAR's New York Gala with her warm introduction of New York designer Donna Karan, an amfAR honoree, on Thursday night. The event packed Cipriani on 42nd Street on the eve of New York Fashion Week.

  Wintour recalled how years ago, "Donna enlisted the Calvin Kleins and the Ralph Laurens" and the rest of the Council of Fashion Designers of America to band together to fight AIDS, the disease that devastated the fashion industry in the 1980s. Out of that came the Seventh on Sale benefit and other work to raise money for AIDS research to find a cure.
    "Everyone refers to Donna as an earth mother," Wintour said. "When we go to visit her, she feeds us, drapes us in fabric and tells us about her latest cause."
    Actress Natasha Richardson told the crowd how touched she was by "hearing Anna speak with such heart and passion, this so-called ice queen of fashion."
    Karan, in a one-shoulder black gown, said thatafter seeing "all these designers dropping right in front of us" more than 20 years ago, she had to do something.
    Liza Minnelli, also honored by amfAR, got a standing ovation after she sang. She wore a brown sequined tunic and leggings designed by amfAR chairman Kenneth Cole. Among the celebrities there were Harry Belafonte, Dick Cavett and Mario Cantone.
    A Louis Vuitton vanity case, designed by actress Sharon Stone, was among items auctioned for amfAR by Jamie Niven, chairman of Sotheby's North and South America. "Not much room for underpants," he joked, holding up the case -- a wink to Stone's star turn in "Basic Instinct."

"In a tough economy, Spanx sales go up," Blakely told Reuters at the FEMMY Gala at Cipriani on Tuesday night, where she received the Innovation of the Year award from the Underfashion Club. 

"It's a relatively inexpensive item and it makes women feel better.  Any 'feel good' items for women in a recession" will sell, said Blakely, whose products are found in major department stores and online for about $28 to $72 each.

U.S. consumers have cut back dramatically on apparel purchases in the bleak economy, though many retail watchers acknowledge that women aren't willing to sacrifice some key items -- lipstick comes to mind -- as they trim higher-priced merchandise off their shopping lists.

Spanx Inc -- owned 100 percent by Blakely -- rang up about $350 million in retail sales in 2008. That's not bad for a company she started in 2000 in her apartment with $5,000 in savings and no fashion or retail experience. Her inspiration?

"I didn't like the way my own butt looked in white pants and that started it all," said Blakely, who may be her own best walking and talking advertisement.

Looking svelte in a little black dress, she let slip her secret: "I'm five months pregnant and I'm wearing my Mama Spanx" control panties. "And of course, I've got on my Bra-llelujah! It's molded cups with underwire and the straps, the rest, all pantyhose, so you don't get 'back fat.'"

Hallelujah indeed. Cue up the Handel on your iPods, girls.

(Photo courtesy of Spanx)

At first glance, it looked like a sci-fi movie shoot: Smack in the middle of Military Island in New York's Times Square, men in silver bodysuits wielded cameras that looked like the offspring of a hair dryer and a cop's "radar gun." 
 
One by one, New Yorkers in stocking caps, bulky down jackets and all sorts of cold weather gear stepped out of a long line to let one of the camera-happy silver-clad guys --  known as the Heat-Techies -- scan their bodies for cold spots. The results popped up on a flat-screen color monitor.  
 
What on earth would be worth a long wait in the cold?  
Free high-tech clothes that lock in your body heat, that's what!  
 
Yes, step right up, folks, in front of the Human Vending Machine -- a silver booth with two oval windows and vending machine slots marked "men" and "women." Behind each window, a man and a woman danced with robotic moves and dropped a box with a HEATTECH garment in the person's size through the vending machine slot.  
  
Members of the New York Bicycle Messengers Association got an alert about the event and many of them showed up at 6 a.m. on Tuesday to get in line for the free clothes. The high-tech duds were given away as part of a guerrilla marketing campaign by Uniqlo, a Japanese retailer known for its inexpensive and colorful basic clothing like T-shirts, V-neck tops, turtleneck sweaters and camisoles. (The HEATTECH items start at $10.50 each in Uniqlo's Soho store in New York.)  
  
"I'm out here in the weather, when it's 20 degrees or colder, and so I decided, 'Yeah, I'm going to get me some,'" said Anthony Rice, a New York bicycle messenger who's known by his nickname, "Ninja."  

In fact, bicycle messengers like "Ninja" and his friend "Julian," whose given name is Jose Morales, were among those allowed to cut to the front of the line.  
 
"I was on 34th Street with my buddy when he told me about this, so I'm like 'sure' and rode on down with him," Morales said. "I'm out in all kinds of weather."  
 
Shin Odake, chief operating officer and acting CEO of Uniqlo USA, said the HEATTECH garments were designed jointly by his company, owned by Fast Retailing Co, and Toray, one of Japan's leading manufacturers of chemicals, fibers and textiles.  
 
"There's a special molecule that keeps your body heat contained in the fabric," he told Reuters. "It's tightly woven. If you sweat, it turns the moisture into body heat." The high-tech blend of fibers includes milk proteins to moisturize the skin, he noted.  
Next stops for the Heat-Techies and their Human Vending Machine: London, Paris, Beijing and Seoul.  
 

(Photo: Reuters/Jan Paschal) 

Listen up, fashionistas. Celebrity stylist Jorge Ramon wants women to know that wash and wear is the new rock and roll, when it comes to fashion trends.

That's good news for every woman who's ever skipped lunch just to pay her dry cleaning bill.

"In these economic times we're in, with what's going on, on Wall Street, women want to look good and save money. Finally, fashion is washable. It's affordable, so you don't have to spend money on dry cleaning," Ramon told Reuters. He was presiding over a launch party for Tide Total Care detergent and Downy Total Care softener at the AnnTaylor Loft store in Times Square.

Ali Sharaf, an actress and Broadway caterer, was No. 1 in the line of the first 50 shoppers who scored a personal styling consultation with Ramon on Thursday morning. Her mission: Find the perfect LBD (little black dress) to wear to the opening night party for "Equus."

About two-thirds of AnnTaylor Loft's fall line is washable, said Ramon, who's worked with such celebrities as singers Beyonce and Christina Aguilera, as well as with women selected for makeovers on TLC's show "10 Years Younger."

"I'm seeing more easy-care items" in stores and on runways, "and I just saw a menswear suit that's completely washable," Ramon said, describing the trend. "The idea is here. It's the technological advances in fabrics and in clothing," as well as in laundry products, that have made washable fashion more than just a slogan.

Silicone technology used by Procter & Gamble's beauty division was adapted to create a detergent and softener that would fight the aging of fabrics and help keep their color and shape, Downy brand manager Marty Vanderstelt said.

"Silicone protects the fibers so there's less friction as you move, put clothes on hangers or even in washing," he said.

Chlorine neutralizers, often used in swimwear fabrics, were also added to cancel out the effects of chlorine in wash water and stop dyes from fading.

If only it could fold and iron, too.

(Video: Chad Ruble/Reuters)