Prefall Fashion in Perpetual Motion THE fall 2013 fashion season begins on the worn-down heels of fall '12. Stores are marking down the stuff they couldn't sell as designers present their new duds. There is no time to mourn in fashion, and apparently no room for a guilty conscience about the glut of clothes, since it keeps right on growing like a berserk house plant. Most individuals, I guess, make their peace with this contemporary reality; they buy less or carefully, they hold on to things, they learn to develop a style for the ages. A friend of mine, a fabulous dresser, very eclectic taste, recently bought a Proenza Schouler leather jacket with a slight Japanese cut, and I gave a sympathetic nod when she said, jubilantly, that she looked forward to wearing the boss jacket in her 90s. It will age well, and all those young girls in, oh, 2047 will be envious of an old lady's motorcycle jacket as she wings up Madison Avenue. And they won't know of the years and the stories in between, though she will. That personal history of clothes in the midst of noise interests me. It was the point, more or less, that the Paris curator Olivier Saillard was making this fall in his performance piece with Tilda Swinton, "The Impossible Wardrobe." As Mr. Saillard and Ms. Swinton showed, clothes can convey meaning long after the person who inhabited them has moved on. And for the observer of fashion, such a relatively simple presentation can redirect your focus to other aspects of a garment's power. What to glean from the fall precollections, which have started in New York and will continue until early January? There is a shift to longer lengths, judging by the collections of Oscar de la Renta, Donna Karan and Francisco Costa for Calvin Klein. Mr. Costa put a bit of volume in shoulders and sleeves, and widened lapels in his typically clean-looking styles. Mr. de la Renta's hand-crocheted cardigans - almost boleros - were a softer, lightweight alternative to a jacket, and a dizzy mix of small-check prints in silk separates had a nice pajama feel, more polished than casual. Look for a blast of leather (Michael Kors and Jason Wu, who favored chevron patterns). Graphic prints turn up in a lot of collections, like Prabal Gurung and Diane von Furstenberg, who used '60s Biba romanticism for inspiration. Mr. Gurung's electric pinks and blues, used for prints and front panels of coats, looked especially fresh. Digitalized prints have been big for several seasons, but they are also creating something of a blur in the marketplace. Maybe the fall runway shows will help clear the air. Somehow, I think the graphic-type prints need to be much more distinctive. Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez of Proenza Schouler are on the right track with a new abstract print of their logo, reproduced on spiral-cut trousers in black and white, and shown with their crackled leather jacket. The Proenza fellows continue to make strides, bringing more heft and consistency to their preseason collections. They modified tweeds and silk prints from their September runway show - why ditch a good thing? - and seem to have more easy dresses, as well as some cool denim and shearling jackets.