Boy Wonder

FANFAIR

THE FASHION WORLD'S GONE MAD FOR ZAC POSEN

'My clothing is very feminine," says 21-year-old Zac Posen, "and I think it celebrates movement." It's precisely this kind of blather that tends to give fashion designers a bad name, but in the case of Posen, darling du jour of Naomi Campbell, Bijou Phillips, and random "It girls" with names like Paz de la Huerta, it's somehow excusable. Perhaps because Posen understands one of fashion's fundamental building blocks: "It's totally ridiculous," he says. Not that Posen hasn't racked up some very serious Bright Young Thing credentials. The son of painter Stephen Posen, he grew up in a bohemian SoHo orbit in which Francesco Clemente was a fixture. He was dyslexic, had attention-deficit disorder, wore antlers to school, made bell skirts out of yarmulkes, and made dresses for his best friends, Lola and Stella Schnabel. As a 16-year-old intern at the Metropolitan Museum's Costume Institute, he soaked up the enfant terrible-ness of John Galliano and Alexander McQueen as they did their research. At Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London, he made a leather dress that won the Victoria and Albert Museum prize and is in the museum's permanent collection. He promptly dropped out to do what he needed to do to get on with his career, which in his case meant looking at meat. How meat study can be applied to fashion is anyone's guess; only Posen knows for sure. Suffice it to say that it paid off. In the front row at his debut solo show in New York in February sat one of his newest fans, first daughter Barbara Bush. Now the only one left to convert is her mother: "Out of Oscar," he says, "into Posen!"

EVGENIA PERETZ