By Beatrice Jeschek

Dark and multi-layered between 9th until 16th of September: The Mercedes Benz Fashion Week in New York.

Is it art or just female vanity?

What is more grotesque and beautiful than powdered fashion addicts balancing on seasonal high heels towards one and the same building? Last week hundreds of designers presented their spring 2011collection, and this is the real cultural deal, in the Lincoln Center. No more Bryant Park tents, but performing arts walls.

Now the main area for the Mercedes Benz fashion week: The Lincoln Center

Does this relocation take fashion out of the no-art-closet?

For a long time fashion has been seen as “the bastard child of capitalism and female vanity”, at least among the museum scene, observed Valerie Steele, the director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology (MFIT).

This sober exclusion of fashion into the real arts sphere means essentially one thing: A state of the art is actually a state of the mind.

However, an intellectual trend was going on for many years. It circled around the ritual integration of basically haute couture and out-of-the-normal styles into the Olympus of art.

Just remember the massive Marilyn Monroe dress as part of the fall/winter collection in 2009 by D&G. If this dress is not cultural memory blurring the lines between fashion and art, what then?

Marilyn Monroe dress, fall/winter collection D&G, 2009

It is a silent acceptation (or rebellion in some cases) that we decorate our social bodies with fingerprints of other people’s design, brand or no brand. The hymn of fashion weeks throughout the world mirrors this attitude.

Fashion seems to finalize its move into art, and there is nothing anyone can do about it. But do most people even want to resist?

Taste comes with education. The social body is one public platform for exactly this taste (and more things than we even realize). To let others read signs properly we might search for inspiration or counter-inspiration from those who made it to the top in fashion heaven.

The labels Nicholas K, Cushnie et Ochs and Rachel Comey belong to those outstanding in this years New York fashion week.

Despite a new electronic check-in system at the entrance of the artsy Lincoln Center instead of paper invitations at the more commercial Bryant Park, one thing has remained at this years Mercedes Benz fashion week – true edgy style.

This is New York, ladies and gentlemen.

Asymmetric suit in mille-fleurs print by Rachel Comey

Combing the rustic and urbane (Nicholas K)

Dare to take a closer look - Horned shoes by Cushnie et Ochs

This article was first published 15/09/2010 on maltastar.com.