new school; On London's runways, four gallant young designers showed four very promising collections.(Todd Lynn)(Erdem Moralioglu)(Gareth Pugh)(Danielle Scutt)

Byline: Sarah Mower

To get the point of Todd Lynn, all you need to imagine is the crowd-parting power of a pack of elegant rockers strutting into a black-tie event. "Everyone wants to be a rock star," asserts this gently spoken London-based Canadian. "They just do. And in my experience, girls want it even more than guys." In his first collection, Lynn's supersharp, androgynous Spencers, mess jackets, lean pants, and tattered bow ties managed to nail his "half-formal, half-disheveled look" with such aplomb that the luxury retailers of the world jumped all over it. Hardly surprising, really. No debutante in design, Lynn has for the past few years been the hand wielding the tailoring shears at Roland Mouret, while also running his own side business in custom-made pieces for Keith, Mick, Bono, Marilyn Manson, and PJ Harvey. "When I'd show up backstage at the gigs with my things," he says, laughing softly, "it was always the women who put them on and said, 'Pleeease can we have them in our size?' " Sparked by that demand, and the closure of Mouret's self-titled line, Lynn decided it had finally come time for his own gig. Cleverly, rock star-style, he's making it slick, tight, and hard to get: Each garment, such as a girl's white matte leather jacket, is numbered with a label that reads 1 of 10.

ERDEM

Any designer capable of sending a cache of divine pleated-silk and ivory French-lace trapeze dresses-complete with hand-embroidered, antique-stoned yoke appliques-out of London's grimy East End and onto the floor of Barneys probably deserves a medal. Erdem Moralioglu (English mother, Turkish dad, raised in Montreal) is that person, a 29-year-old specialist in whimsy, romance, and odd botanical and ornithological prints, who describes his uncrushable outlook as "I might be in Hackney, but let's pretend we're in Paris!" Three seasons after winning London's Fashion Fringe design contest (which bestowed the rent-free Hackney studio), Moralioglu properly found his feet for summer with a look he attributes to a childhood spent watching Merchant Ivory films on PBS through the Canadian winter. "I suppose it's quite uncool. I rebel with lace and tulle," he says, while crediting his filmmaker twin sister, Sara, for her ability "to stand back three feet and ask, 'Well, who would really wear that?'_" Newly infused with ease and a smattering of rainwear made in traditional British mackintosh, his clothes fly under his first name, Erdem. "And ...