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For fashionistas everywhere, New York Fashion Week is a bi-annual event that is seen as the fashion -- and economic- barometer of the season yet to come. Despite the snow and wintery weather, the media blitz from journalists, bloggers and papparazi seeking photo ops of celebrities attending various designer shows vie with fashionistas wishing to gain access to the shows and parties to get glimpse Fall/Winter 2010 fashion trends (and any swag that comes with attending parties and runway shows)

For over 10 years, Swarovski's creative fashion initiative has produced a fresh vision on the runway for designers iis sponsoring a "suite" of videos following a cutting edge blend of known top-tier designers including Yigal Azrouel, Ohne Titel, Peter Som, Alexander Wang, Halston, Rodarte, Thuy and Phillip Lim along with some new "break-out" designers--Parabal Gurung and Joseph Altuzarra--about to work NYFW with significant coverage of their collections.

Courtesy of Swarovski

YIGAL AZROUEL: Friday, February 12, Promenade Bryant Park

JULIAN LOUIE: Friday, February 12, Milk Studios

OHNE TITEL: Saturday, February 13, Exit Art 475

PETER SOM: Saturday, February 13, MILK Studios,

PRABAL GURUNG: Saturday, February 13 Bryant Park Salon

ALEXANDER WANG: Saturday, February 13 Pier 94

JOSEPH ALTUZARRA: Saturday, February 13 MILK Studios

GRAEME ARMOUR: Sunday, February 14, Milk Studios

HALSTON: Monday, February 15, Stage37

RODARTE:Tuesday, February 16, 522 W. 21st Street

THUY:Tuesday, February 16, Bryant Park Salon

PHILLIP LIM: Wednesday, February 17, The Tent

NYFW: Day 1

Yigal Azrouel

YIGAL AZROUEL is known for a unique perspective on women's fashions. Tends towards the "less is more" perspective. Embellishment isn't particularly his style. His design aesthete is more about form, function and how well the fabric and cut of the design works. Color plays a part in his person vision but for fall/winter 2010, you can see it's much more muted in neutral shades of black, grey, white, brown, camel with bright spots of color on women only and typically that's the embellishment-- that significant pop of show-stopping color that makes the nature of the design super-critical because if it's not fit perfectly to the body, it's going to be noticed. This is style for the woman who is completely confident in her ability to go minimalist or take this as the basic dress and work it into something breath-taking with the addition of specific accessories.

As you can see, Azrouel features both menswear and womenswear in the same show and the men's line is very clean, neat but with a varied palette of neutrals and it's very much a backdrop for a man to inject his own jot of style.

Yigal Azrouel happens to be one of my favorite designers and I watch his line every season to get a barometer of the clean design aesthete compared to those who go "over the top" with embellishment and feminine frills.