Diana Ross, the Motown star who favors sequins and silk for her concert wardrobe, gave her friend, designer Diane von Furstenberg, a rave on Sunday for her fall 2009 collection of cozy knits and funky hats shown during New York Fashion Week.

“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)