It's about time to put those short sleeves, light colors and summer clothes away and break into our piggy banks and prepare for the fall season. We have reviewed the runway and looked at the many offerings that our fashion Icons have given us for fall and selected a glimpse into what couture has in store for you. Pay attention.

D&G
Querelle, meet Madonna. Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana introduced the studly sailor to the disco queen on their D&G runway. Who else but Domenico and Stefano would crowd the catwalk with both a host of model boys in crystal-studded Madge T-shirts and a crew of mutinous mariners in worn and frayed nautical garb?

Etro
After the huge, hell-red backdrop had been slowly sliced open from behind, a man and a woman emerged through the slit and proceeded to dance an impassioned tango. So far, so Kean Etro. You can generally rely on his shows to fire up a crowd. So why, after that spectacular introduction, did this latest presentation feel a little flat? Could it be that the Duke of Windsor, the man the designer claimed as inspiration for the collection (and whose spirit hovered over a number of catwalks this week), simply wasn't a big enough character to hang a whole show on?

DKNY
The college constituency is clearly a prime target for a designer's second line-as borne out by the menswear aesthetic of Marc by Marc or Star USA by John Varvatos. Now DKNY has moved in the same direction, with a collection that would be a gift to anyone costuming a movie about campus life. It was easy to imagine a gamut of students-from preppies to beats-garbed in these clothes, especially given the way they were layered for the show. There was something about the pinstripes worn over a denim vest, the washed-cotton suit jacket topping another in green leather, or the cabled cardigan tossed over a suit, that embodied a youthfully considered approach to dressing.

Versace
Last season, Donatella Versace resuscitated the South Beach stud of the early nineties. For fall 2006, she stepped back to the previous decade, showing an array of eighties prints and colors to a front row of New York socialites who looked too young to remember them from the first time around. It was, according to the show notes, a deliberate evocation of "the male icon" her brother Gianni created in that decade, a notion reinforced by the revolving trademark Medusa head that served as a backdrop. I really think her collection is all about the crotch!

Prada
With this thrillingly prescient presentation, Miuccia Prada once again proved that she is peerless in her ability to distill current events into a fashion moment. Typically cryptic backstage, she said the show was about "men's forbidden dreams," foremost among them battle and hunting. Hence the video screens that ringed the catwalk, depicting a 15th-century painting of medieval warfare by Paolo Uccello that was chopped and changed so that it read like a 21st-century computer game. This face-off between ancient and modern, barbarism and "civilization," animated.

The leading cause of death among fashion models is falling through street grates.
-Dave Barry