Tommy Hilfiger Bids Good-Bye to Bryant Park

Fashion Wire Daily – FWD101 Model walks the runway at the Tommy Hilfiger show during Fall 2010 Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week …

New York – Tommy Hilfiger's brand of preppy, all-American classics with a twist closed New York's fall 2010 fashion week - as well as theBryant Park venue, on Thursday, Feb. 18.

After 18 years of being the largest central venue for fashion shows in New York during the twice a year collection previews, Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week will move to Lincoln Center in September.

In terms of the kind of glamorous, celebrity-filled spectacle that theBryant Park tents has come to represent in the imaginations of New Yorkers and beyond, Hilfiger did not disappoint. A front row of the who's who of the entertainment world's bright young things included "Gossip Girl" stars Ed Westwick and Penn Badgley, Rosario Dawson,Hayden Panettiere and Ashley Olsen.

Before the show, a playlist of nostalgia-inducing tunes played over the speakers, from Cat Stevens' "Wild World" to Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline" - the latter of which, the entire photographer pit joined in singing along to led by their unofficial conductor for the evening, IMG president Fern Mallis.

When the runway show finally started, another Neil Diamond hit played, "Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon," setting the mood for a collection of looks intended for a girl on the brink of womanhood, or more specifically, "the rosy-cheeked co-ed turned successful entrepreneur who channels a young Katherine Hepburn - East Coast pedigree with a whole lot of sass."

Hilfiger preppy favorites like A-line skirts, knit turtleneck sweaters, cropped mohair pea coats in pop colors like bright red and trench coats - some sleeveless, others in houndstooth - were mixed with some new ideas for the prep school graduate, like a voluminous heather gray coat with origami balloon sleeves, buckled paper bag waist trousers and some seriously hot over-the-knee high heeled duck boots, which also came in a shorter bootie version and are sure to be a best-seller.

The collection felt fresher than Hilfiger's clothes have seen in recent seasons, with a less rigid interpretation of what it means to dress preppy in the 21st century - it's not all navy blazers, deck shoes and seersucker anymore. When he titled the collection, "Preppy With a Pop," he meant it. Peter Som, who consulted on the women's collection this season, clearly imparted some of his artful abilities in uptown-meets-downtown chic, and the styling by the New York Times' T Magazine fashion editor Anne Christensen, who gave the classics a new spin with on-trend pairings like sequins and flannel, or leather with nylon, was also first rate.

At the end of the high octane show, Hilfiger came out and gave a quick thank you to IMG, which producesMercedes-Benz Fashion Week, Fern Mallis and former CFDA president Stan Herman, before the sentimental strains of Jay-Z's "Empire State of Mind" came on with Alicia Keys buoyantly singing "New York, concrete jungle where dreams are made of, there's nothing you can't do, now you're in New York!"