Model wears a design at a presentation of the Zac Posen Resort 2008 collection in New York on Wednesday, June 4, 2008.[Agencies]

The notion of "posh punk" may seem like an oxymoron, but Posen doesn't harbor illusions about his customers being anything other than privileged - they just happen to also have a rebellious, downtown streak (like Posen, who was raised in New York by a painter father, Stephen, and his mother, Susan, a lawyer, who now runs Posen's company).

Posen designs clothes that seem out of another era of tailoring, with their unabashed celebration of the female body and an exploration of how far color and material can be pushed in a single collection. The scale of Posen's offerings, one item more intricate and technical than the next, is mind-boggling. ("Are you the new YSL?" asked Stephanie Solomon, fashion director of Bloomingdales, as Posen whisked by with an armful of looks for the models to try on for her.)