Mr. Osterweis remarked that on the drive home from work last Thursday, he passed hundreds of young people, from the garment district to Williamsburg, dressed up for Fashion's Night Out, a display that surprised him.

"But do you get anything creatively from it?" Ms. Beatty said, pondering. She indicated that she didn't think so.

Outside Milk Studios on Friday, Ramona Canino, the executive editor of the Web site stylelikeu.com, stood on the sidewalk with two of her colleagues, Lei Lei Clavey and Zeba Blay. They weren't really going anywhere, because they didn't get invited to Suno, or to Mr. Altuzarra's and Mr. Wang's shows.

Ms. Canino, who was dressed in a Victorian-style jacket with a long skirt and sneakers, insisted that being on the outside didn't bother. She reasoned that since the site doesn't promote designer brands, the way blogs do, she doesn't expect to be favored by publicists. She seemed happy to meet a female musician from Memphis playing at Billy Reid's show, who might do a style video for the site. "I think young culture wants everything to be personal," Ms. Canino said.

But isn't it possible that her style might interest a designer? She smiled and shrugged.

Before Prabal Gurung's show on Saturday, a group of his close friends, including Shaun Lee Lewis, a publicist, and Damien Nunes, a concept designer for Gap, stood backstage. "Personal style is so celebrated now," Mr. Nunes said, when asked what he thought the Saturday crowds offered designers.

With a wry laugh, Mr. Lewis added that maybe designers welcomed the enthusiastic support of young people because it's a relief "from the glum faces of editors who are thinking, ew, two more weeks of shows."

That may be. "We all know it's a lot of hype," Catherine Dietlein, who has been scouting talent for retailers for 25 years, said of the commotion. Few people are as eager to discover and champion talent as Ms. Dietlein, who recalls John Galliano's first collections in London and who lately has drawn stores like Blake in Chicago and Maxfield in Los Angeles to the work of Thomas Tait in London. "He's the real thing," she said.

For the blogger known as Bryan Boy, the throngs of young people who converge on the Friday and Saturday shows represent a kind of rebellion from old-guard designers. But, though he openly promotes designers on his blog, Bryan Boy considers such support superficial. "I don't think it helps creativity," he said. "A great designer starts with a vision."

In a way, there is a lot of cross-pollination between runways and the audience that reflects the diversity of styles in New York. "I think New York is incredibly inspiring," said Marcus Wainwright, who with David Neville designs Rag & Bone. They've had a big success with looks like the maxiskirt that strike a realistic nerve with young women.

But there haven't been many break-out talents in New York. Simon Ungless, a well-respected fashion instructor at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, wonders if all the commotion conceals an impoverishment of ideas. "Real creativity comes between the ages of 18 and 25," noted Mr. Ungless, who worked with Alexander McQueen on his first collections. "But we've killed all that kind of critical thinking and problem solving you need. We've made life about multiple choices." Students, he said, "are not coming in with history and knowledge. They haven't got the drive to push anything."