It’s difficult to fault the V&A of the past ten years and under the leadership of Mark Jones it’s gone from strength to strength. From their outstanding Vivienne Westwood retrospective to the Fashion in Motion runway shows featuring the likes of Gareth Pugh and Jean Paul Gaultier, they’ve successfully removed themselves from the stuffy, conservative image of old and in the process gained a whole new audience. So what’s happening around SW7 of late? Well amid the Grecian tiles and medieval bed pans you’ll find ‘New York Fashion Now’, which seems like a bit of a misnomer considering it only covers the period 1999-2004, but we’ll come onto that later.

The exhibition covers the ‘start-up stories’ of 20 designers including Mary Ping, Proenza Schouler, Zac Posen and a host of other usual suspects. In this respect it does a reasonable job of covering all the main players, each receiving a separate stand with one or two examples of their work. The somewhat overrated John Varvatos receives far too much attention, referenced at several points throughout the exhibition and I could have done without the tribute to Sean John’s very own brand of high glamour. However It was great to see a couple more avant-garde designers such as SSWTR, Cloak and Christian Joy, who had by far the most interesting section, showcasing several of his designs worn onstage by Karen O, including the fantastically mental ‘Day of the dead suit’. Menswear master Thom Browne (a favourite at Dover street Market) gets a showing too, his ‘sheer Swiss dot suit’ a great choice.

In terms of layout it was all a little confusing, separated into style ‘Atelier, Sportswear chic etc’, then for some reason into area ‘Soho, Lower east side, Chelsea...’ These categories ended up being a little meaningless in the end and as a result the whole thing lacked direction. For me, NY fashion is intrinsically linked to the geography of the city. From the effortless cool of LES and Williamsburg, to the primped and preened residents of the Upper East Side, it was a shame that the exhibition made almost no reference to these very specific pockets of style. And what of the actual state of New York fashion NOW? No mention of more contemporary designers such as Rachel Comey or Adam Kimmel made the whole thing feel stale and out of touch. By overlooking the current crop of independent designers and making little or no reference to street style or vintage influenced trends it felt as if the organisers just didn’t get the point. The beauty of NY Fashion is the relationship between the glitzy and the avant-garde, underground and commercial, a balance that unfortunately just wasn’t addressed in this exhibition.