Suzy Menkes At New York Fashion Week:Day Six

Proenza Schouler:Preppy Python

The black-and-white checked shirt; the elongated, at-an-angle bodice; and bone-white leather skirt that opened the Proenza Schouler show was stab at doing something new with an endangered America's species: sportswear.

Designers Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough had a bold take on classics.They took trousers and spliced them into one leg red, the other orange, and performed the same trick with green and white legs.

The duo took the tunic as a dress and swept it down to the floor; or they created skirts in open-work fishnet mesh, which showed the legs inside stepping forward with a purposeful stride.There were more classic parkas and calf-length tailored spring coats in black wool or Prince of Wales check, cut concisely and precisely.

But while the more classic pieces were a nod to Céline in Paris, the overall feeling was of experimentation - particularly with python.That was fine for boots, but bold to a fault as inserts into tailored or casual outfits.

It seems churlish to criticise what must have been an impressive technical achievement.But mostly the scaly snake inserts looked weird.

The same was true of Twenties-style, flapper-girl silk fringing.Nearly a century after fringe on shimmy dresses liberated the legs, these strands were floor sweeping.

The Proenza Schouler shows are sometimes a puzzle, but always an expression of intelligent thought and complex handwork.Sotaken individually, there were beautiful pieces.But as a show it did not set my pulse racing.

Read more:Proenza Schouler Spring/Summer 2015 Ready-To-Wear

Anna Sui:Granny Takes A Trip:

Ah, those irrepressible Sixties!Mini skirts, stove pipe pants, long hair for men and knee high boots for dolly girls.

"Granny Takes a Trip," said Anna Sui, referring to the Swinging London boutiqueof that name.She was surrounded by three leggy men in flower power patterned jackets channelling the Sixties Art Nouveau revival.

Anna Sui is viscerally attached to her familiar territory.But she does the dolly girl thing so well that her front row fans never tire of watching a runway filled with colour and pattern.

The summer season was true to form: baby doll blouses, short-and-sweet skirts, socks with metallic leather platform sandals.And denim galore.

The Sixties wardrobe was revisited with digital print and fabrics with a shine.It also brought long skirts and floaty pants in the entire colourful scenario of those happy, hippie days.

It was nostalgia without regrets - and with a riot of fun clothes.

Read more:Anna Sui Spring/Summer 2015 Ready-To-Wear

Reed Krakoff:Colour Field

Clothes in an art gallery, judged by the tenets ofmodern art - that was the concept of Reed Krakoff, who eschewed a show this season in favour of a presentation.

"A colour field," said the designer, explaining the prevalence of blue in the model line up.

Krakoff reeled offup more fashion definitions in his collection:''lace, perforation, macramé, bead embroidery'.And he also spoke about his belief in technical fabrics and utilitarian materials.

It all added up to streamlined dresses, perhaps with ageometric insert at the side of a simple dress; or white shoulders creating an angular change of colour on a shiny blue dress.Marabou around the ankles added a flutter to high-heeled sandals.

The problem of a static presentation is precisely that: the lack of movement.But Krakoff was smart enough to have digital images to show the clothes in motion.

Read more:Reed Krakoff Spring/Summer 2015 Ready-To-Wear

Boss Women:Texture Messages

After a faltering start last season, Boss women, the female side of Hugo Boss, got on track.Staged at the top of the World Trade Center, with digital bushes challenging the view over the Manhattan waterline, designer Jason Wu's collection was a hit.

Where the previous Boss woman effort was stern, these clothes were streamlined, but appealing.Crisp geometric stripes traced a pattern on simple dresses, often creating a diamond shape.The graphic lines continued down to the flat gladiator boots.

But the core piece that made this collectionwork was the crisp shirt - a must-have item for next summer season.As a partner to a slim skirt whose grey brick pattern was echoed in the shirt collar, the outfit looked sharply modern.

The same idea came in different forms, but mostly as a partner to a more decorativeskirt, in lacy, crunchy textures or with a metallic shimmer.

The Boss collection had a surprising number of semi-evening dresses, perhaps with a veil of chiffon over a plane, V-neck shift.

But the focus was on architectural cuts, contrasting with intensely worked textures, micro-pleating being an example.Such streamlined clothes used to be the essence of American style, so that there is a touch of irony in a German-based company beating the New Yorkers at their own game.

Read more:Hugo Boss Spring/Summer 2015 Ready-To-Wear

Pop Inspiration At Jeremy Scott:

"I made it all myself!" said Miley Cyrus, sticking out that infamous tongue and showing the crazy, colourful jewellery - from threaded beads to dice and feathers - that she had made for the Jeremy Scott spring/summer 2015 show.

By the time the designer pulled Miley up from her front-row seat to take a bow, the audience was screaming with excitement at this unexpected finale.

Backstage, Jeremy Scott gave a breathless rundown of his inspiration:"It was about music and youth culture, the beach, and the Coachella festival."

It is more than 20 years since I first slid back the black metal door of a small studio in Silver Lake, Los Angeles, and encountered Jeremy Scott.He already had the infectious energy, enthusiasm and fascination with cartoons, comic books and colour.

Now his front row is an audience of stars from the music world.But his approach is the same: clothes to have fun in for women and men, with wild floral patterns mixed with graceful marble waves, and mixing any colour that makes you smile and think of summer:

There is peony pink, grass green, turquoise, yellow - and if that does not cheer you up, there are T-shirts with comic faces, as if cut out on a pumpkin.Shorts (for both sexes), long skirts (for girls only), and fun mixes of tops and bottom halves are a riot of craziness.And then there's shocking pink marabou as the edging for yellow chiffon.

Jeremy Scott is also designing for Moschino in Italy.He clearly has enough energy for both.

Read more:Jeremy Scott Spring/Summer 2015 Ready-To-Wear

Rachel Zoe:An Eyelash Blink From Hollywood

No wonder Rachel Zoe took the jet-set glamour of the Sixties as her inspiration, for having worked in Hollywood and carved a career based on high octane glamour, her spring collection had to be worth her weight as a stylist.

I liked the classic Grecian drapes set off by gilded change edging and belt; the sharp tailoring in black with a V-shaped white collar; and Rachel Zoe's "piece de resistance": a dress with an eyelash pattern that she has made her signature.

Read more:Rachel Zoe Spring/Summer 2015 Ready-To-Wear

Michael Kors:A Sporty Take On Romanticism

"Be my, be my baby," crooned the Ronettes, adding yet another layer of upbeat energy to the famously happy shows of Michael Kors.

That song, linking the prim Fifties to the Swinging Sixties, expressed the spirit of the show, where the designer of upbeat sportswear mixed streamlined pieces with high romanticism.

The crisp white shirt worn with a flowered skirt, airy in texture but dense with decoration, was the key piece.And throughout, the counterculture to dynamic sportswear was a soft prettiness, focusing on flowers, from the daffodils and dahlias embroidered on a skirt to a leather sash with a flower tie.

"Think about the uptight Paris of the Fifties, and then sportswear, when you jammed your hands in your pockets," said the designer backstage, where front-row guests from Mary J. Blige to Jessica Chastain gave the show a big thumbs-up.

The way that Michael Kors stitched romance into his more familiar blazers, tailored jackets and Bermuda shorts was well done.The bouncy circle skirts never turned the show into a parody or a costume party.

Eagle-eyed buyers must have divided the collection between customer staples and one-off must-haves.The crossover was colour, so that the same buttercup yellow on a floral skirt appeared on a streamlined duffle coat, while blue suede that looked like denim was worked into a tailored navy jacked with lacy floral skirt.

Descriptions of the clothes make the Michael Kors approach seem simplistic, which in a way it is.Some of the blazer/soft-skirt looks even had a shadow of Ralph Lauren.

But if it were so easy to take the Kors route, other designers would do the same - and have the same astonishing commercial success.Instead, Michael Kors seems like the leader of a look that follows a long tradition of feminised American sportswear.