The Michael Kors Spring 2013 collection is modeled Sept. 12 during Fashion Week in New York. Designers filled the runways with clothes that the everyday Midwest woman could have taken directly off the model and worn the next day without any weird glances thrown her way.

The Michael Kors Spring 2013 collection is modeled Sept. 12 during Fashion Week in New York. Designers filled the runways with clothes that the everyday Midwest woman could have taken directly off the model and worn the next day without any weird glances thrown her way.

The Michael Kors Spring 2013 collection is modeled Sept. 12 during Fashion Week in New York. Designers filled the runways with clothes that the everyday Midwest woman could have taken directly off the model and worn the next day without any weird glances thrown her way.

In this photo provided by J.Crew, the J.Crew Spring 2013 collection is modeled during Fashion Week in New York, Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2012. “The pajama trend is here to stay,” Tommy Hilfiger, American designer, said during the latest biannual New York Fashion Week.

“The pajama trend is here to stay,” Tommy Hilfiger, American designer, said during the latest biannual New York Fashion Week.

More glorious words have never been spoken, and I don’t even care if they’re true.

Of course, Hilfiger didn’t mean actual pajamas but instead silk pajama-like shirts, a staple in designers like Hilfiger’s and J.Crew’s Fashion Week collections.

The week of Sept. 6-13 marked this season’s showcase of Spring 2013 designs and trends, and among them, we can expect stores to carry a lot of stripes; tons of loose fitting garments; a variety of chunky, layer-able bracelets; and otherwise practical clothes in the upcoming spring season.

Overwhelmingly, designers filled the runways with clothes that the everyday Midwest woman could have taken directly off the model and worn the next day without any weird glances thrown her way.

The week’s collections embraced a variety of styles. While in the past, New York Fashion Week made loud and clear that specific trends would be top-selling items (ahem, neon), it’s safe to say that Spring 2013 includes something for everyone.

And I do mean everyone. Fanny packs and crop tops brushed up against leather and corsets; the black and white color schemes of Marc Jacobs contrasted against the bright color pops of Michael Kors; designs that exaggerate the female form clashed against loose-hanging garments.

And all the differing designs, I believe, tell us something important: fashion is no longer a top-down hierarchy. There isn’t someone at the top dictating arbitrarily what we should be wearing and buying. The hierarchy is becoming flatter and flatter; the fashion world is melding into a democracy. And because consumers are more and more holding the keys to the fashion world, the opportunity for increased individualism is ripe.

My hope is that the market reacts in a way that produces lots of new, local, niche shops and fewer warehouse-style stores. Now that nothing is too off-base, now that we’re armed with a lot of choice, perhaps we won’t take the easiest, most convenient way out. Now that it seems that we are the masters of our sartorial destiny, we’ll choose our path wisely.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the convenience and options of going into one 40,000 square-foot store and picking and choosing the pieces that work for me among an overwhelming amount of clothes. However, I like even more when I go into a store like Nomads, 725 Mass., or Hobbs, 700 Mass., and know when I walk in that I am going to like nearly every single piece of clothing they sell.

While New York Fashion Week tells stores what they should be looking out for to sell in the upcoming seasons, and while we saw definite trends at this Fashion Week, look for more and more defined and unique trends coming from different designers in upcoming Fashion Weeks. It’s my hope that these trends, which should grow in number and become more defined, will fuel an emergence of individuality in upcoming years.