Click here for a special offer. Click here for our free newsletter. Thanks to popular chains like Banana Republic that borrow heavily from such understated designers as Miuccia Prada, the small shoulder and narrow sleeve, the lean pants and liquid skirts have become a sort of uniform, so persistent and pervasive that historians have begun to wonder if women's fashion has arrived at the kind of mature stability achieved by men's fashion 150 years ago, with the triumph of the modern suit.
Women buy a pair of shoes like they buy a piece of jewelry.
Until the end of the 18th century, it was men who lavished attention on their feet. Women's fashion is now, some believe, at a turning point of similar magnitude, coinciding with the equally dramatic social transformation of the past several decades. It's hard to characterize because we're in the middle of it, but it's conceivable that fashion itself is playing out. But the shift has accelerated in recent years, thanks to changes in the technology and business of fashion. Against that background, the shoes at FIT look like fashion's last gasp.