Drop by drop

New York's Fashion Week will trickle to the Triangle before too long

All those leggings everyone's wearing? They wouldn't be, had it not been for designers at New York Fashion Week. How about all those long, belted gray cardigan sweaters or dainty ballet flats? Fashion Week. And the return of all those ladylike dresses? Fashion Week again.

You might not ever buy the latest from Marc Jacobs. You might not be able to afford what's new from Oscar de la Renta. And you may never be thin enough to fit into anything made by Proenza Schouler. But there's a good chance some of what those top designers put on the runways starting Friday at New York Fashion Week will, in the next few years, trickle down to your closet.

Don't believe it?

Ann Taylor, one of the country's leading midpriced retailers for stylish women, has a selection of printed faux wrap dresses in dark, muted colors. Not only are the colors the same as those on dozens of designer runways during the fall 2006 fashion shows, but the dresses themselves are takeoffs of Diane von Furstenberg's wraps shown at Fashion Week two years ago.

At J. Crew, mannequins in the front display window at the Crabtree Valley Mall store wear dresses that could have been in a recent Nanette Lepore collection -- especially the ones in canary yellow.

At Charlotte Russe, baby doll tops and empire-waisted mini dresses mimic the same flirty, girly styles that started showing up in spring 2006 collections by Alexandre Herchcovitch, and later by Betsey Johnson.

And at Banana Republic, a full, polka-dotted khaki skirt smacked of Tracy Reese's collection from last fall.

"The runway show is a big inspirational tool for designers," says Ashley Vermillion Harris, owner of the Raleigh clothing boutique Vermillion, which sells some of the industry's top designer brands. "It's the first wave of inspiration of the season, especially for the designers of stores like J. Crew or Banana Republic."

Not every look is inspired by Fashion Week. In fact, many are born on Parisian or Italian runways; sometimes it's the on-the-street French fashionistas who influence the French and Italian designers, and later, the American designers.

But bigger trends typically gain traction after being shown on the catwalks in New York. Mass market designers go to the shows or see the looks the next day on style.com, or a few months later in fashion magazines, and within a year, many of the same styles and colors are showing up in mainstream stores such as J.C. Penney, Target and Kohl's.

In the movie "The Devil Wears Prada," Meryl Streep's character summed it up best when explaining fashion's trickle-down effect on a dowdy blue sweater worn by Anne Hathaway's character. She explains how the sweater's hue probably was born during an Oscar de la Renta collection four years before, showing the same shade of cerulean blue. Then the color was picked up by Yves Saint Laurent. And then, eight other designers used the color in collections.

"Then it filtered down through the department stores and trickled on down into some tragic Casual Corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin," Streep tells Hathaway. "However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and so it's sort of comical how you think that you've made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you're wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room. From a pile of 'stuff.' "

(That same cerulean blue, by the way, keeps on showing up. J. Crew has a cashmere sweater, and Eddie Bauer is selling a parka in the same shade.)