Fashion week started with a banging  punk  rock  base line.  Fears of rain  were mercifully unnecessary. A clear night and a nice crowd of about 500 spectators made the  historic event well worth  enduring a less-than-comfortable  August night  standing on asphalt. You can’t have it all.

SKIF  always delivers a fresh, exuberant  perspective on knit, but the darling of the evening was the debut collection by  St. Louis  hairstylist Ashley Daley and Felicia Pease  working as  AVF.  The nimble duo  produced a simple collection that was big on volume, but low on maintanence.  The loosely shaped garments  managed to  gather and fold at just the right angles. The look was cute and girly, but not overtly so.  And I don’t know who that first model was for the collection, but she’s got a stunning pair of chocolate brown legs and  can strut like  nobody’s business.

Now about this prehistoric business.   Thank you Vitamin (that’s pronounced veet-a-men, I think) for a funky acrobatic feast for the eyes. Was that Sam Foxman (event producer, best dressed, pop locker) doing the robot  after his turn as a supermodel? I almost missed him because I was looking at the glowing image of internal musculature  on his track suit.

To explain, Vitamin produced a wild collection of active wear — think track suits and hoodies — that included images of internal organs, muscle structure and spinal chords etc. The images were highlighted so that hearts and brains and hamstrings would shine in glowing yellow, orange and green when models walked by the blacklight.

But the models rarely walked. Most of them scooted, pranced, twirled and danced up the runway and one extraordinary fellow back and front flipped like the warm city pavement was made of springy trampolines. Very impressive. I have no idea what he wore.

Oh, yeah the reptile look. Well, that is a snippet of stolen conversation.  

We all know that  faux croc and python are everywhere this season, so Vitamin added to the mix  by including some numby rubber mohawks to the hoods of some of their items. The numbs  mimicked the bony projections along the spine of certain dinosaurs (I guess I missed that part of Jurassic Park with all the names). I’m assuming it was some reference to our less than human past and biology.

Despite the sound of it, some of Vitamin outfits, including a little pink track suit with many zips looked like something I’d wear for a walk in Forest Park, but then again, maybe that says more about me than the outfit. Hmmm.