Unadulterated cool

The audiences at New York Fashion Week can be a tribal bunch. Their very appearance advertises where their fashion allegiances may lie. Of course, this makes for a visual feast when these clans spend their days sizing each other up, blatantly critiquing the success or failure of a person's attire.

While this sport has been one of the pleasant side effects of waiting endlessly in queues for shows to begin, the business of dressing for fashion week has become much more serious affair with the emergence of professional bloggers like Scott Schuman of The Sartorialist, who travels the globe looking for doyennes of fashion to photograph and celebrate.

Schuman's website has grown so much in notoriety, he was recently chosen to shoot the latest ad campaign for DKNY Jeans. Given his success, it's not surprising that the front steps of Bryant Park have now become a minefield of online style analysts who want to capture the "ordinary" folk in their fashion week finery.

Invariably their subjects fall into several groups, from the quilted Chanel brigade, who discreetly dress in luxury labels and always in black, to the non-conformists, who love nothing more than the element of shock and will happily talk at length about the quest for the perfect pirate hat or authentic military jacket.

That's not forgetting the purveyors of streetwear, who will be found at Y-3 or Diesel in up-to-the-minute denims, Wayfarers and beatnik coats.

Break all rules

But there's one group who deserve a category of their own - the disciples of Marc Jacobs. What's special about this group is that they do not belong to any one genre of style. Instead - like their leader - they break all the rules and set their own trends. They'll appear on the sidewalk like an epiphany, causing all others in the presence to wish they had the same inherit gift for fashion.

On Tuesday, the bloggers massed outside the New York State Armory jostling to get a photo of this eclectic crew as they entered the designer's diffusion show, Marc by Marc Jacobs.

The collection represented everything the fans had come to expect - which is unadulterated cool. Felt hats, tweed jackets, plaid blouses and coats and Rainbow Brite stockings were all part of the mix, as well as another nod to the '80s high-top sneakers.

For mere mortals, this jumbled assortment could look like something out of a rummage sale, but the Marc Jacobs set make it work with effortless attitude.