Part 1: New York Fashion Week,Spring/ Summer 2008. Reviews by Peter.

News from America! Fun in the sun, the reality TV version, is still all the rage. I don't mean old Big Brother episodes (I realize it takes awhile for the best trends to hop over to Europe). No, it's the L.A.-based The Hills, the enviable space-planet Bridget on Fashionista Diaries,and Full Frontal Fashion. Full Frontal runs fashion shows 24-7 during New York Fashion Week, and it caused me a lot of misery about Spring 2008 in New York.

I turned on the TV too early for Spring 2008 this year, when they were still running fall couture Galliano. Friggin' Galliano. Every dress had the ability to bang anyone in a room. Wasn't that my country's old pose? Here in America, it was a death blow to an already overwhelmingly commercial fashion sense consistent with our low standing in the world's eyes. Or so I was convinced at the rise of the curtain on Spring 2008.

Marc J. certainly agreed with me. Look how he marched out. The tabloid line was he spent the first two hours of his post-rehab show's intended start doubling down on the brown at the Mercer bar. The real reason - he was rank after 72 hours spinning his wheels over his collection, and had to clean himself up. Like an overprecious Brando in Apocalypse Now, he found the symptom, not the cure, to our ills, in this case to runway's post-mod malaise ("it's quoting, not living!" might have been his final O.D. words - instead, he put quote marks around looks in parody, and we asked, as with a slogan T-shirt, what are you supposed to do with this once you get the joke?).

Similarly, Zac Posen and Anna Sui tried to throw water on the robot, but their collections behaved like a short-circuited robot - randomized, Trekkie, jagged, spastic. Sui tried to evoke Busby Berkeley, but instead of kaleidoscope Vargas we got a collection as clownish as the pink lipstick glory-holing so many 2008 runways. Hey, it's a great look on the club kids, but it was an unpleasant reminder of the recent American merging of stylist and designer.

And so initially I could only see in the shows, apart from the failed rebellion: the tired, the moneyed, the yearning to be worn by lawyers looks that abounded this year. But you know, dwell on bad vibes, whither madness. So instead, here are some favorite looks. And, warning, I'm ending on a balls-to-the-wall redemption for the red white and blue.