Some people say New York's social season won't begin until the Metropolitan Opera or Carnegie Hall have their opening-night galas (on September 22 and September 24, respectively). But this view is obsolete: New York women are just too industrious and too charitably engaged to wait that long.

And so, yesterday, two days after Labor Day, the social season launched at a gala for the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, organized by its supporters group, the Couture Council.

It was the launch of the season because of the people who had gathered from various worlds (Agnes Gund, Elizabeth Stribling, André Leon Talley, Basil Twist, Joey Arias) and because of the palpable sense of anticipation they brought with them.

Fashion, it turns out, is at least as compelling a way to rededicate oneself to doing good work as a night of classical music or opera.

Fashion is just as serious an art as opera or classical music, as the exhibitions of the Museum at FIT prove. (There's one opening tonight exploring Gothic fashion.) Designer Isabel Toledo, who was honored yesterday, captured the weight of fashion beautifully in her remarks.

"I became a designer because I wanted to affect how time looks," Ms. Toledo said.

All great art winds up reflecting how time looks. Clothes can do it, operas can do it, and galas, as an art form, can also do it. That is to say, fund-raising events are expressions of how time looks, and not only in a fashion sense. They also reflect a time's décor, entertainment, and the inner workings of social circles.

Of course, that Big Picture is hard to see at any one gala. There's too much people-watching and work to do. Yesterday, at the luncheon, various guests promoted events they are working on: the opening of the Museum of Arts and Design on September 27; the L'Oréal Legends Gala benefiting the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund on November 10 (L'Oréal was a sponsor of the FIT event along with CIT); an October 2 luncheon at Le Cirque for Lighthouse International, and, more immediately, a fashion party last night at Saks Fifth Avenue to celebrate designer Maria Buccellati's fall/winter 2008 collection with Rock + Republic.

And so the calendar fills up. It's time to go out and about again.

agordon@nysun.com