the others; Commercial lines-a flock of pretty dresses by Oscar, Prada, and YSL-are,as Sarah Mower reports, no longer the dumbed-down sisters of their runway counterparts.

In the annals of fashion one-upmanship, there's one experience I've never seen recorded.

It goes like this: you walk into the office or toward a group of women friends. Hellos and kisses ensue, followed by a speculative pause while you're scanned, one, two, three seconds longer than is strictly socially acceptable. Then, someone is finally forced to say it: "Great jacket. Where's it from?"

Such is the triumph of anonymous dressing. Wearing unidentifiable clothes that look like yours first and a designer's second is a belief system, really. I've subscribed to it as long as I've been conscious of fashion, but there are ups and downs to this faith. It was great in the minimalist years, when everything was spare and black (Helmut Lang achieved the ultimate "designer unidentifiable" uniform), but when logo mania hit, around the millennium-and displaying one's Gs, CDs, LVs, and CCs became fashionably right again-I just wanted to hide under the duvet.

It's safe to come out now, I think. Even though runway news, through the Internet, is globally monitored by hundreds of thousands of women-and celebrity label-flaunting rages unabated-another powerful fashion undercurrent has been pulling inexorably toward the attraction of "personal" clothes. For fall it finally surfaced in a tangible way. Even as they put their leading ideas about dark romance and rigor on the runway, the most on it designers were also openly talking about the clothes they never put out for public scrutiny-until they reach the stores.

A quick scan of what was hanging in the showrooms was enough to reveal why these alternative collections (which have been part of big designers' business for years) are suddenly worth more than a cursory glance. At Prada, there was a lineup of pretty, embellished coats and dresses-obviously from a different part of the family from the runway look, but just as beautifully designed and detailed. At YSL there was a gray pantsuit, belted with a bow, a beautiful long, full-sleeved Empire dress, and a cool military skirt suit-among much more-to jump at. Over at Oscar de la Renta and Dolce & Gabbana, whole parallel universes of nonrunway clothes are eminently worthy of plundering.

The shift is that these clothes are no longer the dumbed-down sisters of their starry catwalk counterparts. (For the record, they belong to what designers variously call "precollection," "commercial," "selling," and "main"-information that makes my eyes spin in my head with a confused kind of boredom.) The point is this: Times have changed so much that these clothes are unrecognizable from the plain old unregarded "basics" that, ten or so years ago, used to make up the bulk of designers' other-nonrunway-product. For one thing, that stuff doesn't sell anymore, and for another, newcomers have arrived to change the system for the better. ...