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As a bright and early kickoff to Fashion Week, Zac Posen came to honor the winners at the Ecco Domani Fashion Foundation Winners’ Breakfast. We wondered how the economic downturn was affecting his line. “It’s helped me to become more pure and determined in my vision,” he said, brimming with confidence. “It’s a more creative time.”

Sure, Posen is scaling back in some ways — he’s holding his studio’s party this year at Pop Burger. But he even managed to draw a positive comparison between today and the period after September 11. “I started my business in another trying time, right after 9/11,” he explained. “Everyone was saying ‘don’t go into business, there’s no place, there’s no retail world out there.’ Nobody wanted to hear about a new brand. But you create your own excitement, and you create the industry, and you create the customer, and that’s what is going to get this country out of this difficult time.” Posen’s own creativity is so forceful, in fact, that it apparently crosses language and culture barriers. “I’m very emotional as a creator and business leader within my company,” he said. “You’d need about fifteen translators in my studio. I have every language in the world working together. It’s like the United Nations Atelier.” Does Posen himself speak any of these languages? “None of them. I speak the language of construction and form and emotion, and that’s how we communicate.”