Bright Young Things New York's Spotlight Falls on Roaring 20s

Call it the zeitgeist, call it coincidence, call it industrial espionage. But each season, despite every designer's best efforts to jealously guard their ideas, fashion agrees on one era to shine the spotlight.

It is early days in the fashion show season but so far the 1920s and 1930s are way out in front for next spring's collections.

Perhaps the fashion community has been inspired by previews of Stephen Fry's film Bright Young Things, an adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies, which opens next month.

Diane von Furstenberg's show was a homage to the era's gilded youth, with silk georgette dresses and shimmering flapper dresses in coral and silver. A silk minidress in Von Furstenberg's signature leopard print, translated into yellow and fuschia, and a shirt dress with belt and double cuffs nodded to the era.

Von Furstenberg, whose guests included Susan Sarandon and Helena Christensen, cited her inspiration as The Great Gatsby and "the fun, glamorous, sporting life" of society women of the era.

The classic belted wrap dresses, which are bread-and-butter to the Diane von Furstenberg brand, were adapted to fit the mood, with the waistline dropped.

At Tara Subkoff's hip presentation, models with their hair in Veronica Lake finger waves wore elegant flapper gowns. While at Kimora Lee Simmons' Baby Phat label, the designer cited Josephine Baker as her inspiration and dressed her models in short silk dresses with peacock feathers in their hair.

All of which was a world apart from the wardrobe crises faced this week by ordinary New Yorkers, struggling with 27C (80F) heat, daily thunderstorms and an approaching hurricane. So far, peacock feathers do not seem to be catching on.