Fringe is Back!

Two roads diverged on the Fall runways. (Well, actually several, but bear with us.) Some designers took the strict and narrow path, while others, Donna Karan and Comme des Garçons' Rei Kawakubo included, blazed another: letting things hang by a thread. By the time the shows ended, you could say it had grown into a bona fide, ahem, fringe movement: Giorgio Armani paid homage to the Spanish shawl; Giles Deacon nodded to Native American dress; and John Galliano conjured up saucy, Prohibition-era soubrettes who really knew how to swing—and Charleston and shag.