After an abysmal year of retail sales as the United States and Britain suffered their worst recessions in decades, fashion directors at Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, Harrods and Liberty feel a growing sense of optimism.

When New York Fashion Week starts on Thursday to showcase fall and winter collections for 2010, buyers are planning to be more selective and buy fewer clothes as they push shoppers to pay full price instead of waiting for discount sales.

“We have all become much more edited and selective in the way that we buy,” said Colleen Sherin, fashion director of Saks Fifth Avenue. “It is making the consumer realize ‘I probably cannot wait three months to get this on sale, I need to buy it now and I want to buy it now.’”

But while shoppers remain cautious about spending, they are not playing it safe when it comes to fashion choices.

“If she already owns it she’s not interested in buying it again … She is purchasing things to add to her wardrobe to update it with the current message of the season,” said Ken Downing, fashion director at Neiman Marcus.

“Everyone is aware of the economic situation and there’s a need to really speak to the customer in a voice that is going to get her excited and ignited when the season rolls round to come into the stores and shop,” he said. “We want clothes that are so enticing that she wants them at regular price and not waiting for them to be marked down.”

OneStopPlus.com, a brand under the Redcats USA umbrella and the premiere online destination for curvy women who demand high style in plus size fashion, will produce the first ever plus-size-only runway show during New York Fall Fashion Week. Set for September 15th, 2010 at The Atrium in Frederick P. Rose Hall, home of Jazz at Lincoln Center, famed curvy models will walk the OneStopPlus.com show featuring the latest collections for Spring 2011.

OneStopPlus.com is taking a stand to prove that curvy women are equally as beautiful and as fashionable as their size two counterparts with a plus-size runway show coinciding with the high-fashion shows located at Lincoln Center. The noteworthy event will showcase top trend-driven styles, featured on prominent models such as: Lizzie Miller, and Tocarra Jones, who have been chosen to flaunt their curves down the runway. Emme, the plus-size icon and brand ambassador to OneStopPlus.com, will be hosting the red carpet.

“The recent confluence of events and energy within the plus-size movement makes this the perfect time for OneStopPlus.com to debut at New York Fashion Week,” says Stephanie Sobel, President of OneStopPlus.com. “Top plus-size models like Crystal Renn and Lizzie Miller in Italian Vogue, French Elle, Glamour, Marie Claire, and others, validate that this is the magic moment for plus sizes.”

OneStopPlus.com is a pioneer in the ever-changing fashion industry, proving that the 62% of American Women who are plus-size can also experience the high-fashion lifestyle.

Zahir Babvani, VP of Design of OneStopPlus.com says, “This show is a collaborative effort to provide the extraordinary community of plus-size American women with the uncompromising style that they have always deserved but never received. It’s about inclusion and fashion democracy: fashion risk-taking and empowerment. No more seeing what you can’t have; this is a fashion party that invites and inspires everyone.”

Taking a dramatic stance on behalf of women around the world, OneStopPlus.com highlights the plus-size revolution that is currently taking place in fashion, inviting the industry to attend the exclusively themed Belle Epoque, the Golden Age plus-size fashion show. Brands to be showcased include the best in American and European plus-size designs.

“We find ourselves in a new golden age that is plus-size fashion,” says Galina Monaco, Designer of OneStopPlus.com. “Befitting our collection, elements of Belle Epoque are present with touches of feminine lace, rich drapery, decorative florals and, of course, the gilded shine of slight sequin embellishment.”

Fashion design as a career is particularly in demand especially by young people and the worldwide school possibilities are vast. But the myth of the fashion industry and the career profile given to the public have often little to do with the reality. Today the fashion industry consists of more than only beautiful dresses and creative talent for lasting success. The challenge the designers face lies in viewing the business in its entirety and the difficult balance between design and commerce. Nowa- days, brands pre-define themselves through lifestyle and world experience. To be successful in the fashion market it requires founded knowledge over strategic marketing, sales strategies, PR and production.

Since 2009 the Berlin platform Fashion Patrons, has organised a Fashion & Design Academy with the goal of offering further training and a well-balanced and versatile programme in order to pave the difficult way of starting a company. Covering themes such as business and market-relevant processes, the present conditions of the fashion industry, future development as well as new communication concepts and strategies.

During each show’s opening montage, the smiling Housewives pose and preen in front of a voyeuristic camera. Wardrobe favorites include jewel-tone dresses in shiny satin or, for the more demure ladies, georgette frocks with low-cut decolletage. More often than not, said dresses appear to be at least one size too small.

The point of this introductory shot is not to establish the women as fashion savants. The manner in which they position their hands on their hips, shimmy and toss their hair makes them look more tarty than tasteful. In some openings, the women will have their heads tilted back in a rather haughty manner while they perch with formal posture on an armchair. The statement: Here sits imperiousness that’s ready to pop.

With the likelihood of inappropriate behavior thus established, let the hair-pulling — or weave-wrenching — ensue. Fashion is a weapon, a distraction, a power play from Atlanta to New York.

In more than one version of The Real Housewives, fashion provides an outlet for the women’s entrepreneurial interests. Fashion is the perfect occupation for the Housewives, whose job it is to look good, stir up trouble and engage in the kind of consumer gluttony that transforms a shopping trip into a day-long affair that requires breaks for sustenance.

Few other industries have so captured the public’s imagination as a fertile ground for money, glamour and catty behavior. The fashion industry fascinates because it is charged with attaching a dollar value to physical attractiveness. It also allows for an open and loving display of material goods. A housewife can inventory her collection of shoes and have it cast as research for a possible fashion line.