General Motors is aiming to make good on its pledge to improve the fit and finish of its once dull car interiors, and it’s fashionistas — and not stodgy auto writers — they are hoping to impress.

Engineers and designers from GM headquarters in Detroit came to town for Fashion Week, wining and dining models and the discerning members of New York City’s fashion press.

GM went so far as to set up a “Design Salon” in Sony’s recording studios in Hell’s Kitchen as a entertainment venue. It didn’t hurt that rapper Jay-Z, along with his impressive entourage, was in the adjacent studio. The studio designers say that distressed leather, black lacquer, and mood lighting is in at GM and they are attempting to capture the same sort of young, hip, and affluent Americans that might buy Jay-Z’s albums as future customers.

“We want the experience of getting into our cars to be holistic,” GM’s components designer, Kate Zak, said. “It’s all about what you see, touch, and even smell.”

Hard plastics, plush velour, and black rubber? Out. Way out. The company’s vice chairman, Bob Lutz, criticized the interiors of GM’s cars and trucks when he arrived at the company more than five years ago. He charged them with transforming the automotive design department from top to bottom, and that included how the interiors come together.

It’s a transformation that will take a while, because, like anything else in the auto industry, the dealerships must sign on. One trend that GM is pushing is matte finishes over most of the dashboard. Yet company officials have been distressed to see dealers smearing Armor-All onto those surfaces in order to give them luster.

These days at GM, its 12 interior design studios around the world are fairly isolated from the rest of the company’s operations. Company officials say they want those designers to brainstorm and collaborate in a freewheeling, unrestrained environment, far away from the cost-cutting pressures of MBA types that crowd the company’s headquarters.

GM has recently hired designers from cellular telephone companies, fabric specialists, and even a tattoo artist. What they’re coming up with has noticeably changed the types of car interiors America will begin to see during the next year.

“Up until recently, the fabrics used in cars were the types of fabrics that wouldn’t be found anywhere else,” the executive director of interiors for General Motors, Dave Rand, said. “Now we’re looking toward what people look for in their home furnishings and extending that feel into their cars.”

Quilted patterns, long popular on jackets, are now making for sumptuous seating surfaces in Cadillacs. GM is also betting that younger buyers won’t mind having to care for distressed leather seats and arm rests with saddle soap if it means getting the same results they get from the living rooms at home.

Discerning buyers are looking for exposed stitching, dual patterns, and new textures. In the world of the pickup truck, never the most sophisticated area of auto design, bucket seats sport a pigskin-style leather that evokes the feel of a football. The paint schemes on SUVs are going toward matte finishes that make the vehicles look like futuristic, aluminum-cast machines.

Even key fobs — those high-tech keyless entry gadgets — have not gone without intense scrutiny. “When you meet someone in a restaurant and you place it on the table, you want to make the right impression — nothing plastic or cheap, with a little weight to it,” Ms. Zak said.

During informal studies by designers, they noticed how many people walk to and from their cars in parking lots talking on their cell phones. Their thinking is that before a key fob gets integrated into an iPod, it could be placed into a GM-branded telephone.

The Fashion Week audience gave GM designers some encouragement. The interior fabric and leather schemes that took their cues from high-end handbag and luggage color palates were big hits. So was the new center-console jack for the iPod.