The Newest Stars to Watch in 2004
By GINIA BELLAFANTE
Published: December 30, 2003
..... Style potentates have recalibrated their barometers to rely less heavily on hype or patrilineage, say, as measures of a designer's merit than on old misbegotten standards like the basic attractiveness of a garment. Fashion may not be as hospitable for the Stella McCartneys and Tara Subkoffs (Stevie Nicks costumes? Beer-stained T-shirts?), but here is who is likely to reign at the party next year:
DEREK LAM When Derek Lam showed his first collection, for fall 2003, he worked in a neutral palette that did not ferry him into ports of buzz and renown. But the morning after he showed his next collection, full of colorful prints and gently angular cuts, shopkeepers (Barneys, among others) descended on his showroom. As a member of Michael Kors's design team and as a former assistant to Geoffrey Beene, Mr. Lam has a professional résumé that trumps his social profile, which happily remains next to nil.
SEBASTIAN PONS A Majorcan who worked for Miguel Adrover, Sebastian Pons made his debut with a spring collection that betrayed a stunning gift for handiwork. The show paid tribute to a "gorgeous mosaic" view of ethnicity without deploying overt or naïve politics. He made references to Hellenic culture in his cuts, Incan civilization in his embroideries and so on. At times his details were quietly complex, at others simplistically bold, in the manner of a child's yarn-work. His clothes were quickly picked up by Kirna Zabête in New York and United Arrows in Tokyo.
DUCKIE BROWN With their new label, Steven Cox and Daniel Silver have injected high-end men's wear with a bit more fun and considerably less ridiculousness. Unlike 96 percent of men's runway fashion, their clothes do not depend on the ambisexual Caesars Palace gigolo as muse. Mr. Cox, once a designer for Tommy Hilfiger, and Mr. Silver, a former daytime talk-show producer (who insists that he hoped to write a book about that experience called "But Do They Have Teeth?") have made bright color contrasts their trademark while keeping cuts and shapes uncomplicated. Maxfield in Los Angeles spent five times what it did last season for its spring order.
A Londoner with a degree from Central St. Martins College of Art and Design, Jonathan Saunders has consulted for Pucci and Chloé but turns out prints unlike anyone else's for his own budding line. Remarkably, his graphic geometric patterns do not suggest a yearning for the 1960's. Stores like Henri Bendel are enamored.
LARS NILSSON Inexplicably removed from his post at Bill Blass in early 2003, Lars Nilsson resurfaced at Nina Ricci, poised to return the house to its elegant beginnings. Mr. Nilsson dispensed with sharp angles to produce diaphanously feminine clothes that did not seem beseeching in their quest for femininity. It took virtually no time for the dresses to show up in party pictures gracing the sylphlike and well-born.
for his Spring collection (the Style girls) and he did amazing prints fro McQueen(S/S '03) and Pucci so he could "rule" next year. 
