Ms. Wolkoff in her Midtown office. (Emily Anne Epstein)

In the 31st-floor offices of SWW Creative, the walls are beige, the carpet is gray and the cabinets are standard-issue wood-grain. There’s no Eames armchair, no runway stills splashed across the walls, not even a lucite coffee table with a copy of Grace Coddington’s memoir. There’s not a flower in sight.

While fashion professionals are known to obsess over the color of their pens, SWW Creative’s offices are about as splashy as an insurance agency’s. Stephanie Winston Wolkoff is not concerned.

Ms. Wolkoff, who orchestrated Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week’s Lincoln Center expansion, isn’t in it for Smythson notebooks or a pair of Céline fur sandals. She is an executor first and a fashionist somewhere further down the line, finding more satisfaction in a spreadsheet than an Avedon. Though she’s a front-row fixture and a special-occasion catwalker, she doesn’t scour the runways for her own closet. Instead, Ms. Wolkoff, who stands a statuesque 6-foot-1, prefers the simplicity of a uniform—Ralph Lauren is her everyday.

“The outside world thinks that Fashion Week is so amazing and so glamorous and so over-the-top,” said Ms. Wolkoff, who has been overseeing the twice-annual event since 2009. “Is it important to have celebrities there? Great. Is it important to have the athletes in the front row? Super. But the truth is, this is a business.”

And yet, by acknowledging as much—and reimagining Fashion Week as populist and business-friendly—she has rankled fashion’s artistes, who feel that recent changes have given the event a noticeable odor of commerce. Under Ms. Wolkoff’s tenure, corporate sponsorships have taken center stage in a lobby concourse that more closely resembles the Javits Center than the heart of couture. Also, for the first time, there are events for the public, in the form of fashion-art collaborations with Lincoln Center’s performance groups. It’s gone from a tent to a circus.

“Lincoln Center is amazing—they have amazing facilities, they have everything you could possibly need,” said Stefan Golangco, the communications director of progressive menswear line Asher Levine. “But our brand is also about being underground and being off-schedule and being a little bit ... maybe less commercial. [Showing at Lincoln Center] doesn’t feel unique to your brand, especially if you’re a small label. You kind of get lost in the shuffle.”

While Fashion Week may be a few days longer now and may feel bigger (the tents certainly are), the number of shows in its main hub hasn’t grown materially since Ms. Wolkoff entered the mix. The total number of designers showing at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week itself has remained pretty much the same—the big explosion has been predominantly offsite. In 2007, when Fashion Week was still at Bryant Park, 90 designers showed at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week while 165 showed offsite. Last year, 91 designers showed at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week at Lincoln Center and 231 showed offsite, according to data from the Fashion Calendar, a fashion event scheduler, and IMG.

(Emily Anne Epstein)

Many of the designers opting to show offsite are looking for a particular sense of place; a mythology that matches their brand. “I always dreamed about being a part of Bryant Park, and when Fashion Week lost its location, I was really bummed about it. I lived for that moment,” said Nary Manivong, an emerging designer who has chosen to show his work offsite and off-schedule.

Of course, nobody can keep everyone happy, and Ms. Wolkoff is aware of that. She’s not interested in reclaiming defectors. She is interested in making sure the event goes off seamlessly.

“I stay in control of every little thing,” said the maestro of Post-it notes, corkboards and carefully stacked folders. “I want to make sure that nothing falls through the cracks. If I could delegate a little better, I would be better off.”

She is well-known for indifference to the theatrics so often associated with fashion, calling herself an industry “Switzerland.” “There’s no drama,” Elle’s creative director, Joe Zee, told The Observer. “Whatever is happening behind the scenes, everything still feels very put together.”

Every detail is per Ms. Wolkoff’s design, said associates, one of whom likened her preparedness to that of a Boy Scout. “I don’t feel it’s appropriate to put my hands up in the air and say, ‘too bad,’ you know, or ‘It’s not my job,’” Ms. Wolkoff said. “There were times when I’d be sweeping the floor before an event if the floor was dirty. I wouldn’t wait for someone to come into the room and do it themselves.”

Ms. Wolkoff is known in the industry as “General Winston”—a name bestowed on her by Anna Wintour, a career-long mentor who tapped her to become Lincoln Center’s director of fashion when Fashion Week was pushed out of Bryant Park by an ice-skating rink. Ms. Wolkoff, who had previously headed the Vogue-hosted Costume Institute Benefit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is credited with helping elevate it from an East Coast event to a star-studded couture pageant.

She is one of the many New York fashion success stories who owe their rise in large part to Ms. Wintour’s mentorship. Ms. Wolkoff was a client services manager at Sotheby’s when Ms. Wintour hired her to do PR for Vogue, despite her lack of fashion experience. Raised amid acres of farmland in the Catskill Mountains, the black-belt preferred working on her jump kick to reading magazines. “Fashion was not something that I knew about,” she said. “It just wasn’t really particularly interesting.”

But what Ms. Wolkoff did have was an intensely disciplined work ethic, which was solidified playing power forward for Fordham University’s Division 1 basketball team. The diligence of waking up for predawn practice drills developed a personal drive that became impossible to turn off. (To this day, she calibrates her schedule to the minute, opting to have a manicurist come in to do her nails at her desk so she doesn’t have to cut into family or work time.)

(Emily Anne Epstein)

And she looks the part. Described by an associate as “the first person you see when you walk into a room,” Ms. Wolkoff came equipped with Vogue-worthy family associations: her stepfather is Bruce Winston, jeweler Harry Winston’s son.

“I didn’t have quite the understanding of the difference between Vogue, Elle, Harper’s and the rest of the world,” Ms. Wolkoff said, recalling her interview at the magazine. She was hired the same day. “I knew Anna Wintour was the editor in chief of Vogue, I just didn’t understand what it meant to wait around to meet with Anna Wintour. I didn’t lie that I read Vogue every day or that I grew up loving fashion, but I did know how to roll up my sleeves and do whatever it took to learn it.”

In the cosa nostra of fashion, Ms. Wintour’s blessing is likened to being “made” by a mafia boss. The wheels are slicked, critics are silenced and success is imminent. Accordingly, Ms. Wolkoff’s ascent at Vogue was rapid; she jumped from PR manager to special events manager to the head of the Costume Institute Benefit.

“The Costume Institute Benefit became my baby. It was something that I lived, breathed, day and night,” she said. “It was all about excellence. It was all about never taking ‘no’ for an answer from anyone in order to achieve the ultimate goal.”

At Lincoln Center, Ms. Wolkoff expanded on the foundations laid by Fern Mallis, the founder of Fashion Week, whose efforts put American designers on the global fashion map.

“We wanted to compete with Paris and Milan and other world capitals. There was very limited international business coming to New York, because we weren’t organized,” Ms. Mallis told The Observer. One of the initiatives she pursued was corporate sponsorships that would help offset the costs of the runway productions.

(Emily Anne Epstein)

Ms. Wolkoff nurtured those relationships, creating events that were open to the public rather than only buyers and editors, prying open the former fashion fortress and transforming it into a sprawling campus. “My goal was to put fashion on par with all the other cultural institutions that were at Lincoln Center,” Ms. Wolkoff said. “I always wanted to somehow democratize Fashion Week in a way that hadn’t been done before. I wanted to create a place where editors, models and designers could rub elbows with the everyday person.”

Some designers have balked at the new venue and the new vision, opting to take their shows elsewhere. Marquee New York brands like Proenza Schouler, Marc Jacobs and Alexander Wang have all decided to sidestep Lincoln Center. “The feedback I’ve gotten is that it’s way more commercial out there. But at the end of the day, that’s what it’s about,” Ms. Mallis said. “I certainly miss Bryant Park.”

Mr. Zee says that Ms. Wolkoff’s innovations have “matured” the biannual event. A self-proclaimed “fashion dinosaur,” he has been to shows at every fashion week, since long before they ever found a home at Bryant Park.

“I kind of love Lincoln Center,” he said. “She’s really made it into a true event. It’s not about going to a fashion show and leaving—she makes it into a true experience. It’s like growing up: Bryant Park was the teenage years, and now you grow up and you migrate uptown. It’s bigger, more glamorous ... it’s more what it is.”

At the end of the day, the models need to walk, the buyers need to shop, the editors need to see the season’s best and the designers need to sell their handiwork. It’s a trade show.

“If you look at who’s involved in fashion, there’s glamour, and smoke and mirrors, but it is a true business,” Vanessa von Bismarck, co-founder of fashion PR firm BPCM, told The Observer. “[Ms. Wolkoff] is someone with a business mind and [she] knows how the business works.”

(Mario Zucca)

In June of last year, Ms. Wolkoff stepped down as Lincoln Center’s director of fashion to take charge of her own company, SWW Creative. She still oversees the event, but now IMG and Lincoln Center are her clients, along with a number of other companies, including the Council of Fashion Designers of America, Penske Media Corporation and Kapture, an iPhone photo-sharing app.

Setting up shop privately enabled Ms. Wolkoff to dictate her own terms, which include being able to pick her three kids up from school and get home for dinner with her husband, real estate developer David Wolkoff. “I didn’t have children not to be with them,” she said. And even though her daughter Alexi has made the occasional runway appearance, she’s not an aspiring Tavi. “My children do not know the difference between Tar-jay and any other designer brand,” Ms. Wolkoff said proudly.

After bedtime, she typically dives back into work. “I go to sleep once I’ve put my third child to sleep, and I will wake up around 1 o’clock in the morning and work for a couple of hours, and then go back to bed,” she said, pointing to the 1,777 emails that had accrued in the past hour.

Once left alone, Ms. Wolkoff settled back into her seat and began riffling through the stacks of paper spread across her desk. She checked her iPhone and called out to her assistant. It was clear: she may be the first person you see when you enter a room, but she’s also the last to leave.

eepstein@observer.com

The atmosphere of American Express Skybox. (Photo by Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for American Express)

“We like that you feel a little chaotic and it’s all very well planned,” explained a representative from American Express. “This is an opportunity for us to give back to our premium card members who are passionate and we are giving them a very immersive experience, as you can see, with the models running around.”

Cardmembers are spoiled with backstage tours, coups de Champagne and a gourmet spread worthy of a sultan.

“They get rushed into a show right as it is about to begin and then the best part is that after the show they get to come back into the studio and the designer comes in for a Q&A,” we were informed by one of our hosts.

The Observer threw back a few a glasses in the sun-lit salon that had been tastefully decorated with cozy loungers and a private hair salon replete with stylists, before we were ushered to the front-row of Cushnie et Ochs’s runway presentation last Friday.

The exclusive experience isn’t for your average chum. Wealthy Centurion and Platinum cardholders pony up big bucks for the VIP packages backstage at Milk Studios and in the Skybox at Lincoln Center. For this fourth incarnation of AmEx at MADE at Milk, members from Los Angeles, Dallas and even London jetted into New York for as briefly as one day of fashion shows and boozy, behind-the-scenes action.

The view from the Skybox

These folks avoid the lengthy delays of press check-in, horrendous fashion personalities and truthful banality that fashion week quickly becomes. In fact, the VIP experience utterly fabulous, if not downright obliviously serene. The Observer was more than content to dip our cup deep in the well and indulge.

“It’s pretty smooth sailing,” one well-dressed AmEx staffer confessed.

Indeed it was, perhaps the most relaxed we would be for a very long time, during a very fussy week.

It’s not all about lucrative and getting chumming with top-notch clients. American Express actually makes efforts to do some good. In addition to providing support for emerging designers through its partnership with MADE the company contributed a hefty $250,000 donation to the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund, a program of the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA), we were told.

Thursday, September 13, American Express cardmembers will get to canoodle with celebrity stylist and reality show empress Rachel Zoe and experience a special runway show. “It's going to be an incredibly fun and fashionable evening,” forecasted Ms. Zoe.

We’ll of course be on the scene and fill you in on precisely all that goes down.

Two images from the Alexandre Herchcovitch show. (left: Jennifer Branken, right: Jessie Adler/Milk Studios)

As sartorialists make their biannual pilgrimage from New York to London to Milan to Paris, some veteran tent-dwellers still have a pebble stuck in their Louboutins from Lincoln Center.

The glossy editor’s anxiety over being edged out of the front row, it seems, has migrated over to the media riser and down to the pit. What was once the province of professional photogs, to hear them tell it, has been overrun by iPhone and iPad wielding bloggers who wouldn’t know a bounce flash from a zoom lens. And they’re hogging up the press passes for backstage beauty shots!

Shortly after they turned off the stage lights and sopped up the champagne, a handful of disgruntled photographers reached out to The Observer to kvetch. Slights ranged from being turned away from shows, to an errant iPhone interrupting their runway image, to discovering that the insolent photo-bloggers never learned the etiquette about getting your shot and moving on.

One accredited photographer, who wanted to remain anonymous for fear of being “black-listed,” is even in the process of drafting a “letter of grievance,” calling it “my sort of manifesto, to explain to them what it is to be a photographer, if they choose to separate the bacon from the pig, so to speak.” (We wonder how well the fashion crowd will relate to a pork metaphor, however.)

Those who make their money through licensed images that go out to newswires and magazines, insist that it hurts designers to have Google Images flooded with subpar photographs that, literally, show their garments in a poor light.

What’s worse, experienced photographers moan, these bloggers do it all in “front-of-house” attire, with an attitude to match. “They’re dressed to the hilt and pull a point-and-shoot out of their Louis Vuitton,” said Jennifer Polixenni Brankin, a fashion and editorial photographer who has shot twelve seasons around the globe. “They’re just really kids who want to get into Fashion Week. We tapped one of the girls and was like, ‘Where is your camera?’ and she was unbelievably rude.”

Three years ago, the fashion press began noting, through gritted, gleaming teeth, how quickly an online following earned Tavi Gevinson and BryanBoy a seat beside Anna. Now, trained photographers, already circling the lower rungs of the Fashion Week ladder, find themselves competing with a contingent of kids who’ve never heard of color correction.

“I can’t speak for the brands but I hope they would care. They spend a lot of money to put out a fabulous show and that’s a significant investment and I hope they would want the very best photography and the very best pictures coming out,” said Fern Mallis, the renowned former senior vice president of IMG Fashion, best known for running New York Fashion Week for more than a decade. “Like I say, everyone who has an iPhone or an iPad isn’t a photographer. Nor is every blogger, a writer or a critic who has the knowledge and the history to edit, digest and communicate what the collections are about...”

But brands, given the choice between online eyeballs on the cheap and a beautiful glossy magazine shot want, well, both. “I had to take camera phone photos while I was taking actual photos for some of the shows I was at just because they wanted to put them on Instagram,” Los Angeles-based photographer Mark Luebbers said of the client who sent him to New York.

“We love, we love, we love glossy magazines. But the bloggers are reaching a different demographic, and it really is helping the reach of these designers,” said Flint Beamon, an expert in “back of house” management for PR Consulting. “It’s in the best interest that everybody tries to get along. Obviously this is not the case.”

Accredited photographers insist they just want more vetting—and their rightful place back. “I will not waste my company’s time if I’m on second or third row or in a back position on a riser, then I can’t give my agency a marketable image. My image is preset at a price based on what my agency’s expenses are including my salary. So they can’t give it away. I’m in jeopardy. We’re all in jeopardy,” said the photographer drafting the memo. (Paging 2007, says everyone in media.)

In prior seasons, explained Ms. Mallis, the media riser is typically filled with “Photographers who shoot for credible places” and people who are “grandfathered in because everybody knows who they are and they've been shooting for years.” The pecking order of the riser can be every bit as hierarchical as those rows of white chairs, with photogs using tape to indicate their spot—something bloggers may not have picked up on. “They have their own system and they figure out who sits where and who does what and that's part of the mix of the photographers’s pit. The conflict and energy you get with these gruff men and women on the media riser juxtaposed against the well-heeled audience is part of the experience of a fashion show,” said one PR insider, adding, “Ultimately these photographers from the agencies, most of whom are freelancers that get paid only when their images are used-I don't want to say have less reach-but they have a different kind of relevance than they used to in the past."

PR Consulting, the firm where Mr. Beamon works, represents MADE Fashion Week, an alternate to the IMG-run affair that was launched to support young designers in 2009. In a statement to The Observer, Made explained that bloggers are essential to reach what they claim is 11 million viewers through its digital platforms, noting, “Made does not grant access to any shows for specific bloggers, but rather representatives who capture content that is then aggregated to specific sites such as Tumblr, Milkmade.com, or the MADE Fashion Week app.” Ms. Brankin had a different theory, “It seems they’re in bed with Tumblr for Fashion Week,” she said

IMG, which runs the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, offered the following statement about its vetting process, “IMG takes the process of registering and credentialing of media seriously and continually updates these processes to be in line with current technology as well as best practices. We review the credentials of hundreds of new outlets each season and attempt to only credential those that are most relevant.”

Organizers from both camps also point out that PR firms for the designers themselves get to decide whom to invite backstage. Besides, the PR insider noted, failing to credential lower tier outlets just prompts them to get around the process by getting a badge from a B or C list designer, “So all of a sudden they're running around with just the backstage credential and we don't really have any sort of influence over their movements.”

Add to that the fact that old guard may not be as well-behaved as they think. “They hang out until the very last moment, until I kick them out normally. It’s not that they get their photography and they leave. That never happens. And if it does, it’s because they have another show to go to,” said Mr. Beamon

“It's clear that bloggers are a significant presence, but I'm not sure all of them are justified in their presence and their sense of entitlement and when they belong and how important they are,” noted Ms. Mallis, who recently discussed this issue with BryanBoy on her Sirius XM radio show.

Of course, she’s been proven wrong before. BryanBoy once tweeted out a link to his 233,000 Twitter followers, “Remember how Fern Mallis said "twitter won't bring orders for a designer"? well, check this wsj article out.” That was 2009.

-ntiku@observer.com

But this will be the last time that shows take place in Bryant Park--starting next fall (AKA Spring 2011), Fashion Week moves to Lincoln Center.

Mr. Lizalde, 35, whose considerable background in lingerie design probably kept him on the show for longer than most (including he) expected, came across like, as he put it, “a big crybaby.” But that stigma, he insisted, can be chalked up to the magic of sneaky editing.

“I’m not the kind of person that I shake your hand and all of a sudden I start crying,” he said, wearing his trademark shiny train-conductor hat. “So, for me, if you were to know the back story”—he paused, taking in a deep, shaky breath and rolling his glistening eyeballs skyward—“where the tears came from … it’s a whole different story,” he said, apparently trying to dismiss the topic with a few wags of his hand.

After moving on to greener topical pastures, Mr. Lizalde, who was standing next to fellow season-four eliminee Carmen Webber, was game to dish on the final five designers. “If I had to predict, I’m rooting for Rami [Kashou] and Jillian [Lewis],” he said.

Asked why he wasn’t rooting for Christian Siriano, the sassy, über-confident crowd pleaser and onetime Alexander McQueen protégé, Mr. Lizalde covered his mouth and chuckled mischievously. “I think there needs to be some more growth with that. We didn’t talk much, let’s just say that,” he said of their rocky relationship, before adding: “He’s 21! That’s all I have to say. I know that when I was 21, people, you know, they probably didn’t want to talk to me.” With that bon mot, Ms. Webber and an unidentified man who had just joined the gossip circle, nearly collapsed in stitches.

“He’s just now legal!” Ms. Webber contributed with a shout.

Mr. Siriano’s age may have been an issue for some, but Jay McCarroll, the 33-year-old winner of Project Runway’s first season, apparently doesn’t mind a little pupilage, however lawful. “Sex appeal! That’s about all,” Mr. McCarroll, who has been blogging for Elle.com, said of the young designer’s greatest strength.

So, then, he’s not too immature to take home top honors?

“No! We’re all immature,” the colorful bandbox devotee, who said he will launch a fashion line through QVC this summer, told us. “I’m immature and I’m 33. I’m an asshole and immature.”

Victoria Beckham (a.k.a. Posh Spice) had chosen a clear winner by the time all five of Project Runway’s finalists—Chris March, Christian Siriano, Rami Kashou, Sweet P and Jillian Lewis—finished showing their collections in the Tent at Bryant Park this morning. But while speaking to the Daily Transom, the singer and Marc Jacobs muse revealed a bit too much.

“Well, for me personally, there is one designer who is a very clear winner—in my eyes,” Ms. Beckham, 33, the special guest judge at today’s show, told us. “There is one designer which every single piece I saw come out on this runway is something I would wear myself. He made me smile”—upon realizing that she had divulged the sex of her fave fashionista, Ms. Beckham grabbed our arm with her tan, itty-bitty fingers and turned around to see if any Bravo brass had heard her slip—“This designer made me smile,” she added quickly.

If asked to guess which contestant had Ms. Beckham—who was judging today alongside designer Michael Kors, model Heidi Klum and Elle fashion director Nina Garcia—flashing those pearly whites, we would have to go with Mr. Siriano. Though he’s only 21 years old, Mr. Siriano seems a true phenom and, judging by the overwhelming applause he garnered at the show, a crowd favorite.

Amy Winehouse was denied a US visa to attend the Grammy Awards, but she may appear via satellite. [Us]

Also, Winehouse is moving into the guesthouse at Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne's home outside London. [Page Six]

Fashion Week big shots Anna Wintour and Suzy Menkes are tired. [The Cut]

The president of the Academy Awards threatened strikers, saying that nominees must be at the ceremony to win. [Goings On]

Ivanka Trump designed the uniforms for a chain of luxury Trump hotels. [WWD]

The Harpar's Bazaar March issue recreates the gruelingly late start to Marc Jacobs' last Fashion Week show with a 12-page photo essay.[WWD]

Uma Thurman quits smoking, gains weight. [Page Six]

Security guards demanded invitations or credentials at the entrance, despite the fact that the Daily Transom had breezed through all week with neither. “There are a few shows that are huge, and everyone tries to sneak in,” said one sentry apologetically. “And everyone tries to sneak in.”)

Inside, the leisurely pace of the daytime shows—posing for photos, grabbing an energy drink—had been replaced by a desperate urgency more befitting the food-rationed Soviet Union. The crowd descended hungrily upon a helpless table of young KCD publicists, and those who made it past were herded in a large mob into the so-called Tent, the largest of the Park’s three venues. At least waiting out the cold in front of the Lexington Avenue Armory for Mr. Jacobs’s show is an expected indignity.

There was a pronounced absence of flashbulbs, and serious, older-looking editors and industry types, rather than young television starlets. Those bearing microphones had only rapper and clothing designer P. Diddy (who will show his Sean John line today), omnipresent stylist Rachel Zoe and actress Joy Bryant, who was seated between Vogue’s Sally Singer and Shelby Bryan, Anna Wintour’s beau, to choose from. (Oh! And beleaguered socialite Olivia Palermo, who, relegated to the third row, sat unmolested by photographers.)

Mr. Posen’s collection, set against a background tableau of falling chairs, had an Alice-In-Wonderland vibe, beginning with costumey black and white tuxedo concoctions in sparkly fabrics and ending with long evening dresses. Each model wore two black pom-poms in her hair. Two tripped mid-walk, and a third, Karen Elson, wife of rocker Jack White, wiped out entirely as she stepped out to close the show in a diaphanous white gown. Diddy and another model came to her rescue, she laughed her way down the runway, and received an extra round of cheers.

Mr. Posen clutched both Ms. Elson and his sister, Alexandra, the brand’s creative director, as he took his turn on the runway—in a tuxedo, of course—at the end.

Afterwards, a stampede for the exists. “This show was a great way to end Fashion Week,” Ms. Bryant said. Still: “It’s a bit madness.”

"It's a chance to see designers," one told the Daily Transom, before seeing a group with latch-on potential walking by, apologizing and walking after them.

Hamming it up inside for the pre-show flashbulb onslaught were the actresses Sophia Bush and Aisha Tyler, the latter in a cocktail dress, and news anchor Rita Cosby.

Forty-five minutes after the official start time, workers removed a huge, environment-be-damned strip of plastic protecting the runway.

Deep purple, emerald green, navy blue, and gray gave Ms. Acra's collection a regal air. Many frocks looked like classical Greek frieze images, with one sleeve and careful ruffles, mirrored in the model's hairdos: wavy from the neck down, like a complex hairdo finally undone at the end of a party. They were belle-of-the-ball dresses young girls see in their mind's eye when playing dress-up with mom's old nighties.

An hour later and a few blocks south, Ms. Tyler took her coat off at the Cynthia Rowley show, revealing a sleek gray skirt suit. "My hotel's like around the corner from the show," she said with a laugh, when asked how she pulled off the quick-change act.

Further down the row sat Tatum O'Neal, Lipstick Jungle's Kim Raver and Lindsay Price—yes, total Lipstick Jungle saturation point now reached!—and, even further, a messy-haired Philip Seymour Hoffman. On the other side of the runway, Parker Posey, wearing minimal makeup, mock-pouted for a photographer mob, sunglasses on.

"I don't like to go to these things. They make me sweat," Ms. Posey told the Transom.

A blank white runway backdrop fell outward to reveal a sylvan pop-up set with a doorway in its center. Some of Ms. Rowley's designs matched the ragged, leafy shapes and colors of the backdrop. The carefully faded fabrics and Little House on the Prairie shirtdresses seemed bound for Bedford Ave. It all looked deliberately accidentally urban.

And the designer, who had overseen show preparations with two tired young daughters in tow, earned raucous applause from the crowd packed in all the way back to the hall's Corinthian-columned walls.