The Advocates, organizers of the inaugural WOMEN X WOMEN, changed things up this year by putting together a new initiative to feature fashion photography at LG Fashion Week.

While most of fashion week’s designers did stripes in black and white, Brandon R. Dwyer cut his dresses from peach or turquoise and white cloth. And while most of fashion week’s designers left their jersey full and billowing, Dwyer used piping across the bust and down seams to give pieces a sense of bodice structure.

Glowing black lights lit up Jessica’s Biffi’s first spring exit, a baby doll dress with a skirt assembled from oversized canvas panels spray painted with spots of fluorescent pink, orange and green.

I remember the days when I used my runway reviews to plead with Lucian Matis to pare back his detailing just a little. Luckily, he never listened and Matis has become an expert of mixing it up to-the-max.

With Fritz and Diego Superstar from Fritz Helder and the Phantoms mixing a loop of a spoiled voice cooing “I don’t get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day” above the runway, Nada Shepherd turned on the drama for spring with a theatrically styled collection of leather and lace.

Evan Biddell loves comic book colour but some of spring’s strongest pieces were long jersey gowns in basic black.

Aime's Monica Mei Chiu has quickly found her design signature and is smart enough to stick to it. Her spring collection was both expectedly soft, featuring a few great versions of the season's ubiquitous slouchy knit T, and prim, with high-waisted pencil skirts.

The Joe Fresh runway and the Joe Fresh reality are always a little different. So we’re betting that when Loblaws shoppers wear the spring collection’s striped cotton bras, they will be underneath oversized shirt dresses and sheer T-shirts and not over them like the pieces were styled for the catwalk.

There’s still one more round of fashion week shows to watch this evening but I’m already itching to boil down the clothing from the catwalk’s first four days into a snappy list of trends. Here’s what our designer class of Spring 2010 says you should be wearing next season:

A Paul Hardy show is always a bit of a religious experience (his most memorable presentation had editors filing into the pews at the Church of the Redeemer at Avenue and Bloor) and god is in his details.

There isn't an inch of arm room to spare in fashion week’s tight runway-side seats but there was plenty of space on the Pink Tartan catwalk for designer Kimberly Newport-Mimran's outside-the-box take on the ubiquitous big shoulders spotted everywhere these days from Balmain to Sears.

An hour before Sunny Fong's Vawk show, hundreds of the Project Runway Canada winner's fans waited in the front of the AGO on Dundas. At 4 pm, they flooded into Walker Court and Fong sent out 12 looks that drew on tattoo motifs and a Mutiny on the Bounty theme for the punch out floral pattern on leather pieces and the captain-styling of silk cotton jackets.

Now that Greta Constantine's Stephen Wong and Kirk Pickersgill are dressing their male models (albeit sparingly), someone needed to fill the beefcake void on the fashion week catwalk. Enter Lizares' Brian Maristela who thinks us guys should stock up on short shorts and sheer shirts made from traditional banana silk for spring.

There’s no question that Sears’ new Attitude collection is the retailer’s run at the fast fashion market crowded with competitors like H&M and Joe Fresh. But yesterday evening when the line’s entire design team walked the runway to take their bows, it was clear they had successfully convinced the audience that Attitude is more of a private label than a disposable brand.

How we imagine Bustle’s Shawn Hewson and Ruth Promislow came up with their Spring 2010 show concept: So fashion week model favourite Stacey McKenzie and CBC funny man Rick Mercer are flipping burgers on their Muskoka deck while National Post scene columnist Shinan Govani mixes caesars behind the bar. They invite you over for one of their legendary walk-offs down the dock and you know you’re going to have to look good following McKenzie’s pro catwalker strut.

Forget fashion week's front row. Katrina Tuttle's spring collection (pictured above) is already a hit with the cleaning staff at her downtown hotel.

I’m sure there were models wearing some pretty nice dresses at the Andy Thê-Anh presentation in fashion week’s smaller Showroom space last night. We even have photos to prove it. But the pictures are all I saw of spice-coloured column gowns and blue cocktail looks.

Fashion and art are frenemies. The former wants to be taken seriously as a business while indulging its taste for glamour, creativity and spectacle. The latter turns its back on style, snubbing it as superficial unless, of course, it needs to get dressed for an opening.

There is a youthquake happening in fashion.