More than a month after Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week ended, the bespectacled designer Ingo Wilts last week presented his Spring/Summer 2008 collection for the Hugo Boss subline, Boss Black, comprising sophisticated men’s and women’s wear. It was, perhaps, the timing of the show that impelled the German fashion label to throw a full-fledged “fashion show and dinner” bash.

Inside the landmark Renaissance Revival Cunard Building, with its vaulted ceilings, waitstaff wafted through the aisles serving Champagne and crumbling, gourmet appetizers that were (remarkably) devoured by the fashionable crowd.

When the house lights finally went down, there were Hollywood stars such as Julianne Moore and Maggie Gyllenhaal, scurrying to their front-row seats, but the dresses on view harkened back to a bygone Hollywood. Hourglass silhouettes began with slightly peaked shoulders, ended in pencil-skirt hems, and were held together by wide patent belts. Shiny electric blue stilettos completed the looks.

With hair brushed into elevated French twists and carrying oversize clutches, the models recalled Hitchcock’s 1950s bombshells. But a series of breezy blouses that played with transparency and veiling begged for a cover-up.

A look that was widely represented on the men’s spring runways appeared here again: The men sported walking shorts with blazers in crisp white, slate grays, and icy blues. The same cool palette carried over to the casual shirts and monochromatic suits. It remains to be seen whether the shorts-and-suit combo makes it way into less adventurous closets. One thing was certain, though: The stylish gentlemen buyers, editors, and fashion followers seated at the Boss Black show proved a certain rogue-like English sensibility was in the air. Many had donned fall’s shrunken suiting, but with extremely loosely tied knots that lent their wearers a cooler-than-thou feel that seemed to say, “I’m in the band.”

For women’s evening wear, Mr. Wilts showed sleek, floor-skimming gowns in deep eggplant hues and lemon yellows that were simple on the surface, but eye-catching for the complex straps that showcased the back.