Not to get all intellectual on you the second day of fashion week, but to quote Marshall McLuhan, the medium is the message when it comes to Abigail Lorick’s Spring collection. Well, artist’s medium, that is. Inspired by Francesco Clemente’s watercolors, Edgar Degas’ pastels, and Jonathan Greene’s acrylics, the Gossip Girl ghost-designer created a collection based on portrait sittings. When the models weren’t lounging on the raised-stage tableau (while art student Christine Hostetler stood in the corner at an easel, furiously sketching them), they changed looks on the side, for everyone to see. Lorick was right there—the artist at work—dressing them. Kind of like that scene in Unzipped, sans scrim and Carla Bruni. As we know by now, Lorick is pretty creative, so to solve the near-nude-girl-in-the-room dilemma she whipped up some retro-style bras and tap shorts as underpinnings. The good news is that for Spring she’ll be adding lingerie to her already charming mix of girly frocks. While the cynic would say it’s tough times when models don’t have standard-issue backstage dressers, Lorick begs to differ. “That’s what my clothes are all about—a woman getting dressed and enjoying the process.”

—Laurie Trott

Photo: Laurie Trott

Cousins Lee and Ben Copperwheat couldn’t have asked for more British weather for the New York debut of the Copperwheat collection Friday. The English duo presented men’s and women’s on the roof deck of the Maritime, in what was hopefully the worst weather we’ll see all fashion week, but they managed to brighten an otherwise incredibly gray day with a boldly patterned, electric-hued collection inspired by traditional menswear shapes. “We wanted to put out a positive, energetic statement—the energy of this city with the nightlife of London,” explained Ben. “We’re so happy to be in this city and wanted to express it with a bang and a buzz.” So how do you say, “New York, I love you?” The boys reinterpreted the New York Post logo into a tartan print that showed up on coats and trousers; they also screen-printed the city’s instantly recognizable skyline onto “I [heart] NY” T-shirts from Canal Street. If their surname sounds familiar, it may jog the memory of fashion diehards who pawed the pages of i-D and The Face in the mid-nineties and remember Copperwheat Blundell. Lee was one half of that London duo. So what’s next, now that he’s back on the scene? Well, they plan on keeping distribution tight—they’ve got Barneys and Opening Ceremony circling for orders, and Lee told us, “we just can’t wait to start on Fall already.”

—Laurie Trott

They don’t call New York the melting pot for nothing. On today’s fashion week schedule alone, we’ve got an imported Brit (Victoria Beckham), a Norwegian (Elise Øverland), and a Japanese-German collaboration in the form of Yohji Yamamoto and Adidas’ Y-3 collection. New to the calendar are four Spanish talents presenting under the MMODANY banner. Style.com previewed the collections of Juan Duyos, Ana Locking, Carmen March, and Juanjo Oliva last week, and we can confirm that they’re well worth swinging by the Celeste Bartos Forum at the New York Public Library this afternoon from 2 to 4 to check out. But don’t take our word for it—watch this exclusive preview now of the video that will be playing there.

—Nicole Phelps

Click here to download Style.com’s iPhone app—featuring the latest from Spring 2010 RTW >

Background Photo: Steven Torres

Style.com’s editor in chief Dirk Standen reports from the Spring 2010 collections…

New York fashion is having a moment—a Wile E. Coyote moment, to be precise. Like the rest of the world, the clothing business fell off a cliff last year. And yet, we still haven’t plummeted to earth. Women’s Wear Daily, those party poopers, began the week with a piece suggesting this was make-or-break season for many designers (empty order books will mean shuttered doors). That’s probably true, but in the meantime surprisingly few have gone to the wall. And the big retailers, despite rumors of financial peril from Dubai to Dallas by way of Fifth Avenue, seem to have circled the wagons and even had shoppers (or at least browsers) lining up around the block on Fashion’s Night Out. So here we are—editors, designers, retailers, the great American consumer—legs pumping furiously in thin air, not daring to look down, waiting for that bug-eyed uh-oh moment. Still, who knows? Maybe we’ll luck out and it won’t happen. Unlike cartoon characters, fashion people aren’t necessarily subject to the laws of gravity.

That may explain the strong air of escapism surrounding the Spring 2010 collections. “Why all the party dresses?” the International Herald Tribune’s Suzy Menkes whispered to me as we were waiting for the Marc Jacobs show to begin. “Is that really what people want to do when their friends are losing their jobs? Go out and party? Maybe it is,” she concluded. Besides, the fashion houses tried sensible last season, and that didn’t sell either. And you need to have the confidence of a veteran like Ralph Lauren to address the state of the world head-on and then put your own gloss on it, as he did with his ode to the prairie.

To do well in this environment, it probably helps to design in a bubble. Rodarte’s presentations always have the blinkered, bonkers brilliance of one of Jason Schwartzman’s high school productions in Rushmore, and their Braveheart-meets-Mad Max Spring collection—as if they’d torn up their pal Kirsten Dunst’s plaid shirts and stitched them together with bits of leather, yarn, and whatever other scraps they could scavenge—was one of the week’s highlights. Working in a different kind of bubble are the designers who stubbornly refine their particular aesthetic each season, people like Maria Cornejo at Zero, whose brand of minimalism came with a new confidence and sex appeal for Spring (the MObama seal of approval will do that for a girl), and L’Wren Scott, whose Edwardian rock ‘n’ roll dominatrix gets hotter at every step.

But to really thrive as we tiptoe along the knife edge between recession and recovery, you have to be one of those types who enjoys a bit of flux, who likes working without a net. I mean Marc Jacobs, of course. His Spring 2010 collection was yet another hit. (For details, I refer you to Menkes‘ review, though our own Nicole Phelps was right on the money, as usual, too.) In the same camp as Jacobs is Alexander Wang, too young, too carefree, and too talented to be daunted by a little thing like the convulsions of U.S. capitalism. His theme for Spring was football, that enduring if battered source of American pride. He seemed to be reaching a bit this time around, but the energy and optimism is infectious. The same was true at Proenza Schouler, whose designers, it’s easy to forget, are just four years older than Wang. Their color-injected, the-future’s-so-bright-you-gotta-wear-shades mix of sportswear and animal-print dresses was a hit.

It’s not a surprise that Wang threw the week’s most raucous party (in a week filled with more raucous parties than ever): an incendiary bash in a converted gas station, with an expletive-laced performance by Courtney Love. Ah, yes, Courtney. Nothing contributed to the week’s air of unreality more than the combined presence at the shows of Love, Lady Gaga, and Madonna, the three biggest pop divas on the planet (or at least the three biggest platinum-blond pop divas on the planet—Whitney was busy showing Oprah how to roll joints on TV). At the Jacobs show, I looked up and realized I was suddenly staring directly into the eyes of Madonna across the catwalk (or would have been if the superstar had not long ago mastered the art of avoiding eye contact with non-security-vetted personnel). The next night, at Narciso Rodriguez, I was seated across from Courtney Love. By rights she should have crashed to earth a long time ago, but there she was, twisting in her seat, whispering to the guy in the kilt next to her, eyes flashing defiant mischief. In short, schooling the rest of us in the art of running in thin air.

On the last night of fashion week, after Francisco Costa closed the New York collections on a paradoxically serene note, Calvin Klein gave a dinner at the restaurant in the Standard Hotel. Eighteen floors up from those dining tables is the most spectacular new venue in town (perhaps the most spectacular venue this town has ever seen): a cocktail lounge called the Boom Boom Room. And just off the Boom Boom Room is a small smoking balcony. The floor of the balcony is a sheet of clear glass, and there’s nothing between you and the pavement but a few hundred feet of New York City air. It’s beautiful up there. Just remember, don’t look down.

—Dirk Standen

Photo: Marcio Madeira (Rodarte), Sherly Rabbani and Josephine Solimene (Love), AFP / Getty Images (Wile E. Coyote)

No matter how clearly or concisely you try to present the information on a Web site, promotional space is at such a premium you always worry that some content might be overlooked. With that in mind, here’s a handy guide to all our coverage of the fashion weeks in New York, London, Milan, and Paris. Now you never need miss a photo, post, or tweet again.

Runway Reviews and Photos: Judging by last week’s record page views—a huge thank you to our new and returning users—you’re not having any trouble finding these. But as a reminder, this page is a convenient place to locate every designer covered in our Spring 2010 reporting. And don’t forget that you can view each collection in full-screen as well as in regular slideshow format and that many shows feature front-row and backstage-beauty photos as well as runway shots.

NEW! Shop the Looks: One exciting addition to our runway coverage is a brand new shopping experience called Shop the Looks. We’re categorizing each runway look into one of 36 trends, from boho to minimal. If something on the runway grabs your eye, simply click on the Shop the Looks link to find similarly themed looks from a range of top designers and retailers. Here, for example, you can get a jump on the animal-print trend that roared to life during NY Fashion Week.

Street-Style Photos: Because trends don’t just start on the catwalk, we’ve asked popular photoblogger Tommy Ton to document the best off-runway looks from New York to Paris. Tommy has a talent for catching fashionable types in spontaneous, informal moments—not as easy as it looks with a crowd that’s ready to pose at the drop of a Philip Treacy hat. You’ll find his daily photo diary here.

NEW! The Fashion Feed: The Twitter revolution means that the fashion-reporting cycle is even faster than ever, but how to separate the tweets from the chaff? Our innovative new Fashion Feed gathers the most fashionable Twitterers, from The New York Times‘ The Moment to Style.com’s own globe-trotting correspondent Dizzy Blazeberg, in one place. Just click here for a real-time snapshot of what’s happening in the front row and beyond.

Style.com on Twitter: Of course, if you want only the very best tweets, your favorite Web site is now on Twitter (a little late to the party, we admit, but fashionably so, let’s hope). Start following us today.

Style.com on the iPhone: On the other hand, we were way ahead of the pack in embracing the iPhone, and we like to think our app remains the best: It has everything you love about Style.com on the computer, without the hassle of being tied to your desk. If you haven’t already, download our iPhone app now. (Oh, by the way, need a stylish cover for your Apple device? We can help there, too.)

But wait, that’s not even the half of it. Don’t miss:

• Our up-to-the-minute party reports.

• Our award-winning runway videos.

• The Lookbooks that allow you to save and share your favorite photos from the site.

• The regular bulletins you’ll find in our Style File and Beauty Counter blogs.

• And last but not least, be sure to vote for the Look of the Day.

Really, there’s only one thing for it: You’re going to need a bigger screen.

—Dirk Standen

Fashion week notes from the neo-romantic New York designer.

Photo: Getty Images

Fashion Week notes from the Guardian journalist and author of The Meaning of Sunglasses.

Background Photo: Getty Images

Fashion week notes from the legendary Parisian sound designer.

Background Photo: Getty Images

Fashion week notes from the buying director of Harvey Nichols.

Photo: Getty Images