Lauren clothes: If you thought the models, clothes and styling in last week’s JC Penney flier looked like Ralph Lauren’s touch, you’d be right. The department store has launched the American Living Collection, a new line of clothing and accessories for women, men and children, and the home, from the designer. Clothes, like this $100 distressed denim jacket (on sale for $75), are classic Ralph …

With celebrities strutting their star power to the backdrop of models strutting the new designs by designers like Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Zac Posen and BCBG, New York’s Fashion week in early February rolled out the good, the bad and the ugly for the Spring and Fall 2008 seasons.

Marc Jacobs dazzled in the autumn/winter shows in New York, with clothes that hinted at the early 1980s in their cocooning shapes, often with full backs and sashes cinching the hips.

Hilary Alexander reports from New York fashion week.

John Varvatos is not quite a household name yet, but he’s working on it. Named GQ magazine’s 2007 Designer of the Year, he’s carving out a niche for himself somewhere between the upscale marketing empire of designer Ralph Lauren, for whom he once worked, and CBGB, the former Bowery flophouse-bar-turned-music-club that helped launch punk rock.