Designers at New York Fashion Week yearn for a simpler time.

Click here to read a slide-show essay about the retro influence at New York fashion week.

In 1678, Swiss physician Jean-Jacques Harder used the term "nostalgia" to refer to "the pain a person feels because he is not in his native land, or fears never to see it again." It's Fashion Week in New York City, and from the looks of it, some designers are pining for the past, that land one can never experience again.

This is the first of three dispatches by Gloria M. Wong from Fashion Week. To read her second dispatch, click here, to read the third, click here.