Time travel at New York Fashion Week

TOMMY HILFIGER’S SWINGING SIXTIES

Those smug, old, heavily-pensioned baby boomers are fond of saying that, if you can remember the Sixties, then you weren’t there. So who cares that today’s unabashedly over-the-top homage to that decade at Tommy Hilfiger bore only an ersatz resemblance to the real thing?

This was a bit naff but good fun. Hilfiger’s doors of perception, completely unencumbered by nuance, deployed every available stereotype. The stage was a recreation of the Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band cover — rebranded for Hilfiger — with the addition of two drummers who hammered along to Hendrix, the Doors, the Fab Four and more.

Beatle-ishly, the models started in militaria, then diversified. There were Janis Joplin shaggy star-spangled Afghans over mini dresses, Twiggy-era minis with sequinned Hell’s Angel chapter tattoos, go-go dancer bikinis, Woodstock girls in long leather trenches with guitars strapped to their backs, Kinks-y striped suiting with skinny scarves and hippyish semi-sheer floral chiffon maxis ... It made Austin Powers look like cinema verite.

Modern fashion reference spotters will probably harrumph that Hilfiger’s skinny black leather trousers, coats and cap rock-chick look is already a seam being mined by Hedi Slimane at Saint Laurent — but as it is just that, a pre-existing, now-historical look that neither has invented, who cares? And given that the Sixties are now half a century away — most of us weren’t there to remember it — it is understandable that Hilfiger laid it on so thick.

MICHAEL KORS’ FIFTIES FANTASY

With The Ronettes clappily crooning Be My Baby on the speakers, Kors had his next-summer fantasy territory defined even before the first model hit the catwalk. When she arrived, it was in a high-armed, fitted white cotton T-shirt and full white three-quarter-length white skirt embroidered with florals.

Much of the collection to come was a variation of this streamlined circle-skirt and sweater girl Fifties template. The florals became denser, more textured, in embroidered layers on gauze, only sometimes replaced with latticing. The skirts were occasionally matched with angora-fluffy jumpers or a man’s shirt left unlinked to allow its cuffs to unfold over the model’s hands — one of which almost invariably slung a satchel.

Apart from a short skirted, midriff-baring two-piece, whose wearer’s waist was strapped in multiple twists of leather and some geranium bedecked floral shorts, this was a chaste collection for Kors. There were no killer heels and only one or two skirts required sunscreen applied higher than the knee. To render it wearable, the naive Fifties territory was only loosely literal: There were as many contemporarily shaped trouser suits (floral again) and boldly coloured duffels (yellow) as there were wide turn-up capri-length trousers.

Blouses were ladylike with pleating and Peter Pan collars. A series of day dresses, bedecked with still more flowers or gridded with gingham, were perfect attire for drive-in movies, but equally alluring for the Netflix generation.

CAROLINA HERRERA GOES MILLENNIAL

Carolina Herrera is a designer comfortably settled in her position as a beloved dressmaker of New York’s uptown establishment. Her show is attended by glossy aristocracy and her collection is a reliable source of trad evening wear.

This season, however, Herrera grasped the nettle that Oscar de la Renta braved a year or two ago and tried to refashion her formula for the millennial generation. Materially, that meant sticking with the basic recipe — clean, sharp-cut day dresses, agelessly ladylike separates and charity gala full-on frockery — but mixing up the ingredients.

For some reason, synthetic-finished mesh has become New York fashion’s go-to texture. Herrera got in on the act with a couple of pale neon mesh day dresses that had a few more panels than usual, but were otherwise utterly appropriate for the Internet investor scions of her long-term clients.

Loose white trousers and red-petalled floral blouses and jackets were paired with post-Marni platform sandals — deeply un-Herrera but perfectly 2014. A great deal of folding, via detail on the pieces or on the sleek, product-slathered ribbons of the models’ hair, gave the collection a base layer of serenely Asian-inspired precision.

Organically toned shirts, coats and jackets with more foliage detail were quinoa-eater-friendly. And at the end, there was a series of marvellous broken vase evening dresses, all walking jigsaws of reassembled floral panels on a gauzy base of skirt. Yes, there were touches of last-season Chalayan and Christopher Kane, but all adeptly martialled within the bounds of Herrera’s country club arena. THE DAILY TELEGRAPH