The Last Night of New York Fashion Week

The final evening of New York fashion week showcased two very different sides of the city. At the Cooper-Hewitt Museum of Design, Ralph Lauren celebrated Upper East Side chic. Blondes in black dresses nibbled canapés on the lawn before sinking on to white banquettes in a chandelier-hung, opera-flooded marquee. The programme notes waxed lyrical about "faded grandeur", and "aristocratic" femininity.

The museum, a mansion built at the turn of the last century for the immensely wealthy Andrew Carnegie, made a fitting stage for a collection that bowed to European culture - prints in the style of Monet's gardens at Giverny, ballerina dresses in the style of Degas - but was sugar-coated in American opulence.

The fabrics, from pale ticking-stripe cotton to antique French style floral silk and heavy satin, seemed designed to coordinate the wearer with her Fifth Avenue apartment. The only incongruous note came from a trio of distressed baggy jeans - but these were ignored.

If Lauren is fashion aristocracy, Miguel Adrover is from the wrong side of the tracks. His "Utopia" show, two days before the September 11 attacks, featured headscarves reminiscent of the Taliban regime, which likely hastened the departure of his backers a month later. He produced yesterday's collection only by dipping into his savings. His February 2000 show featured a Burberry raincoat made into a dress, and, very nearly, a lawsuit. With yesterday's collection, entitled Citizen of the World, Adrover sent out a less controversial message. There were vaguely ethnic shapes, but also Wall Street suits and baseball caps. A "World Skyline" dress with pagodas, mosques and skyscrapers; and the "World's Hope" dress, bearing the symbol of the UN.