The Last Show: Tommy Hilfiger Bids Farewell to Bryant Park

Racked is no longer publishing. Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years. The archives will remain available here; for new stories, head over to Vox.com, where our staff is covering consumer culture for The Goods by Vox. You can also see what we’re up to by signing up here.

Last night Tommy Hilfiger—after 17 years presenting in the park with IMG (and Seventh on Sixth, its predecessor)—closed fashion week at Bryant Park for the last time with his fall-winter 2010 show. Before the show, to a soundtrack of lite FM classics, photographers chanted along to the music and eventually convinced IMG's Fern Mallis to pose in front of the pit with a camera—so meta. Meanwhile, celebrity photographers mobbed cast members from "Gossip Girl" and Russell Simmons.

After the last model left the runway, Hilfiger came out for a bow and ended up with a microphone. In a short speech he thanked Mallis and IMG for a fabulous run, thanked the crowd for his standing ovation, paid tribute to the tents, and looked "onward and upward" to Fashion Week's posh new digs at Lincoln Center. As people poured out to Jay-Z's "Empire State of Mind" we witnessed a misty-eyed Mallis at the receiving end of many, many hugs—a procession of New York's most fashionable bidding farewell to an era.

The show, with a soundtrack including Carole King and a fairly nuts U2/Taylor Swift mash-up, clearly delighted the audience. Models—dressed in Hilfiger's signature all-American sportswear—emerged from a series of white leather partitions trimmed in brass nailheads. Separates included flirty khaki skirts and pleated chino shorts with cinched waists, piped wool blazers, rich ribbed turtleneck sweaters and henleys, and a series of wool overcoats—a cropped glittery peacoat, stadium jackets, a full-length houndstooth. A tuxedo was irreverently fashioned in navy; a heathered gray jersey letterman's jacket was dressed up by cashmere and a wool skirt; an oversized anorak earned cred from the leather skirt it was paired with; and shots of red and bottle-green punctuated jackets and evening wear.
· All Fashion Week Coverage [Racked]