New York ? Retro remains the future of fashion. The difference between current trends and what is to come in 2003 is which old-fashioned look we’ll be wearing.

Instead of the shabby chic styles of the late 1960s and ’70s that have dominated wardrobes the past few seasons, next year’s fashionistas will be pretty in pastels and silhouettes reminiscent of the 1940s and ’50s.

The spring 2003 runway previews at New York Fashion Week were full of swinging skirts, nipped waists and lingerie-style tops. Designers also showed a lot of sashes, suits, seersucker and shine.

The No. 1 item, however, on the season’s shopping list will be a new dress, according to Cindi Leive, editor-in-chief of Glamour magazine.

“A dress is the easiest thing to put on in the morning, you don’t have to think about it,” says Leive. “And there were a lot of pretty dresses out there.”

Standouts included Calvin Klein’s soft-yet-sexy silk crepe charmeuse camisole dresses and Donna Karan’s beaded, black polka-dot version that featured a neckline you’d expect to see in a bygone era on a woman selling cigarettes at a fancy supper club.

Marc Jacobs dressed up khaki in a silk dress with a bathing suit-tie neck and a shiny pink bow belt; Nicole Miller jazzed up her frocks with crisscross fabric strips and fringe. And Carolina Herrera’s orange chiffon “tiger” gown was hard to ignore.

Hemline lengths, which at one point marked the change of one fashion season to the next, were all over the place, ranging from voluminous miniskirts to long handkerchief hems that were even further adapted by Anne Klein designer Charles Nolan into striped bias-cut skirts that hit the knee.

The “permissive attitude” in hemlines and other trends is good for the consumer, Leive says. “It means anything goes. Women don’t want to be dictated to, they want to wear what looks good on them.”

The rainbow of colors on the runways also translates into options for the everywoman.

Pink and its derivatives that were given fancier names by designers for example, “lilas” by Herrera and “rosebud” by Bill Blass designer Lars Nilsson seemed even more popular than usual, but there was plenty of mint green and yellow, and also navy, khaki and red.

Models file onto the runway at the end of the Calvin Klein Spring 2003 fashion show in New York.

“I felt colors like red, peach, melon, pink, cranberry were the warm, feminine colors we needed,” explains Nilsson. He used these colors both in tailored separates in silk chiffon seersucker and in elaborately embroidered evening gowns.

Nilsson also says any color can be worn throughout the year; red isn’t only for Christmas and Valentine’s Day, and white is not restricted to the three months between Memorial Day and Labor Day.

But, he adds, as the collections move away from folkloric and peasant styles, some darker colors also are being left behind.

“Candy colors are in,” Leive agrees. “When Donna Karan is showing a sky-blue dress, you know this is going to be a big trend.”

The season’s shapes and colors succeed in balancing a look that is feminine but not too girlie, Leive adds. She is not, however, convinced that all the lingerie looks will catch on.

While women likely will be eager to wear satin slip dresses, the many corset and bra tops might be a harder sell. Designers have tried these pieces before without much luck, she notes. “We love to show corsets in the magazine, but readers don’t really respond.”