WHAT WOMEN WANT; Are consumers dazed by today's media blitz of fashion information.

Byline: Mark Holgate

At fashion shows the world over, there are 50 to 100 front-row seats. But now the audience with the most privileged view has seen its numbers increase. Try thousands. Better yet, make it in the millions.

It's not that everyone's sitting there in situ-but with the inexorable rise of fashion on television and on the Internet, consumers' access has seen a huge increase. Now you, too, can be a stylist, delighting in-or discarding with barely a backward glance-the newest trends.

"In all my years in this business," says Michael Kors, "I'm dealing with the hippest customer ever. Women are fearless about fashion right now. And they're often way ahead of everyone else. When I did furs for summer, few stores would touch them. But the women who buy my clothes? They went crazy for them. They're now just as A.D.D. as us designers." Kors adds that today, women understand how the runway actually operates: They know that there are clothes made only for the show; that they're often styled to make an impact on the runway; that the clothes will be modified by the time they hit the racks.

Women are so versed in fashion that they rarely simply appropriate runway looks head-to-toe. They cherry-pick the collections-and vintage stores and outlets and mass brands-at whim, sourcing what they like and then putting it all together their own way. (Why can't Prada work with Junya Watanabe? Who says that Alexander McQueen and Express are strange bedfellows?)

Although they've been in business for just over two years, ...