Hot Under the Collar

The fall collection is distinguished by a palette in black, charcoal and bark. Whether the clothes are for men or women, they are lean and nonchalant. The sweaters look as if they have been stretched and artfully marred with holes and runs. There are trench coats, long skirts, T-shirts, cotton vests, denim and peacoats. The clothes look lived in. They are the kind of studiously lackadaisical clothes that celebrities wear when they are trying hard not to look like they're trying at all.

But despite Lagerfeld's insistence that they embody the spirit of New York, they look more fuzzily international than something that might have sprouted directly from Brooklyn, Queens or the Bronx.

The clothes have a bold toughness to them, says Michael Fink, senior fashion director of Saks Fifth Avenue. "There was wonderful knitwear and wonderful coats, but the denim was very expensive for that market and the collection wasn't well-rounded enough to make the kind of impact we need it to make on the floor." The store passed on the collection for fall -- a rare example of reluctance in the face of the Lagerfeld juggernaut.

Lagerfeld oversees the collection from Paris. His creative director in New York is Harper's Bazaar senior fashion editor Melanie Ward, who was once a consultant to Helmut Lang. Ward keeps her long ash-blond hair in a ponytail. She does not powder it. She dresses in an artful mix of black and white jackets and shirts with flapping vestigial tails and plackets.

As an indication of her importance to the collection, she accompanied Lagerfeld down the runway when he took his bows after the show.

The presence of Ward raises artistic concerns within the industry, not because she is untalented but because she is not Lagerfeld. And now he is in Paris and the collection is in New York. And the designer makes no bones about his lack of interest in the business side of this venture. "I'm not a business person," he says. "I don't want to run the business myself." In fact, he claims complete ignorance about things such as production and distribution, leaving that to Lagerfeld company president Ann Acierno.

In the end, though, it doesn't really matter who makes the decisions about button placement as long as the collection has a point of view that connects with customers.

Saks Jandel is among the stores that will stock the collection for fall. "It had a look," says Marx. "We assumed with this new ownership, we assumed something great would happen and it looked like the beginning of something. . . . We noticed some rumblings, and we believe in Karl Lagerfeld."

Building a Brand

Much of the enthusiasm surrounding the Lagerfeld line has to do with the success of a one-off collection he created for the throwaway fashion merchant H&M in 2004. Customers lined up before the stores opened and the pieces sold out. When Lagerfeld visited Tokyo that year to open a Chanel boutique, fans reportedly went berserk, giving him the kind of welcome typically reserved for rock stars. The fashion industry is betting that he can translate the enthusiasm of bargain-hunting fashion fanatics and the Chanel customer base into a successful midpriced brand.

Robert Passikoff, founder of the market research firm Brand Keys, conducts an annual survey that looks at whether a brand is important to the average consumer. "Chanel always shows up," Passikoff says. "Lagerfeld does not."

On last year's Women's Wear Daily list of the 100 most recognized apparel brands among women 18 to 64 with a household income above $35,000, Chanel -- with its history and high profile -- ranked only No. 35. The Lagerfeld name didn't even make the list. Among these mass market consumers, Hanes ranked No. 1. Calvin Klein was the only designer label to crack the Top 10.

Passikoff acknowledges Lagerfeld's reputation within the industry and his talent. But he encourages healthy skepticism.

The fashion industry uses the term "brand" and "label" interchangeably when they are not the same, Passikoff says: A label is simply a name on a tag. A brand, he says, stands for something. Chanel can be equated with a single concept, such as luxury, or with a particular garment, such as a tweed jacket. Ralph Lauren stands for preppy or a polo shirt. It's murkier what the name Karl Lagerfeld conjures. "He's attuned to what's happening in the street," says Neiman's Downing. "He's a blend of urban and couture."

How that plays out as a design aesthetic is unclear. A teaser collection debuted for spring at Bergdorf Goodman and Neiman Marcus. On the fifth floor of Bergdorf, around the corner from the brightly colored slacker sportswear from Marc by Marc Jacobs and across from the graphic and spangled tunics from Tory Burch, hang a few pairs of cigarette jeans in black and indigo, denim miniskirts with fabric-covered buttons, and chiffon tunics in black. A white cotton tank top has a silk-screen image of what appears to be Lagerfeld's fingers covered in silver rings.

The label above the rack identifies the collection as Karl Lagerfeld. But so far, nothing clearly distinguishes the brand.