Fashionistas get ready to say farewell to Bryant Park

Forget the winter storm - for the nation's top designers, all thoughts are warm and fuzzy, as the fashion industry bids a fond farewell to Bryant Park.

For the past 17 years, it's been home to New York's twice-a-year Fashion Week, hosting nearly 2,500 runway shows. But this season's shows - which start Thursday, showcasing clothes for next fall and winter - will be the last before the event moves to Lincoln Center in September.

Big names who'd previously opted for more individual venues are returning to the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week tents for one last haute hoorrah, including Vera Wang, Elie Tahari, J. Mendel and Monique Lhuillier.

Supermodel Naomi Campbell will also be back, with a last-minute Haiti benefit that's been squeezed into the schedule on Friday, a day after the annual Heart Truth Red Dress show, which raises awareness of women's heart disease. (That event will star VIPs from Heidi Klum to Oscar nominee Felicity Huffman.)

Campbell's Fashion For Relief-Haiti NYC 2010 will also send celebrities down the runway, in designer gear to be auctioned at net-a-porter.com next month. But unlike standard fashion shows, this one's open to the public (tickets are $100 and $150 at Ticketmaster).

"The Fashion Week tents are iconic, not just for star power and style, but what the industry has done for charities, from breast cancer to AIDS," notes John Vater, co-founder of Spa Adriana in Huntington, and a stylist who has worked dozens of runway shows.

The tents, of course, are not the only show in town. Off-site venues have sprouted in recent years, including the MAC-sponsored Milk Studios in Chelsea (which will host shows by Peter Som and Gwen Stefani's L.A.M.B.) and Style360 on the West Side (hosting young brands like rocker Pete Wentz's Clandestine Industries).

Yet Bryant Park remains- for one more week, at least - the center. And not just geographically.

"Bryant Park set a high standard," says Luca Luca creative director Raul Melgoza. "As an aspiring designer growing up," he recalls, "if you showed at the park, you'd achieved a level of success."

Will Lincoln Center's Damrosch Park hold the same cachet? Luca Luca creative director Raul Melgoza, for one, hopes so. "We've seen immense economic change," Melgoza says, calling the move "an optimistic symbol of our willingness to grow and think differently in order to keep New York fashion at its best."