Fashionistas do flock together, but one bird always stands out at New York Fashion Week – often because she’s wearing a crown of black ostrich feathers that she made herself.

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.