Acting Out at Coach, Rodarte and Tory Burch

Maybe it’s the influence of the Toronto Film Festival, which began the same day as the women’s ready-to-wear shows, and the reports drifting south of narratives new and Oscar candidates to come. Maybe it’s anticipation of the Emmys, which are awarded just after the New York collections end, and for which, presumably, some celebrities are in the city to shop the shows.

But all of a sudden, fashion week seems populated by characters.

Not the peacocks preening on the sidewalks, you understand, in their early fall furs and Chrysler Building wedges, but rather the broadly drawn personas that the designers conjured up on the catwalks, with their shrugged-on airs of evening melodramas and art-house flicks.

Defined by their costumes, those personas are easy to identify. And, perhaps the thinking goes, to identify with. If, on occasion, the looks are oversimplified.

Why depend on someone else to invent the character of Cookie Lyon and make her an icon, after all, when you can magic her up on your own? Or at least a wardrobe to suit a type.

For Stuart Vevers, creative director of Coach, his latest vision is a newly punk prairie chick (who is getting entirely more complicated and interesting this season: less wind-swept Sissy-Spacek-in-the-wheat-field, more of a rebel yell and Hell’s Angels ride). Describing her, he wrote, “It’s all about the sense of belonging that comes from being part of a movement.” Even if it’s just a sartorial fan club.