NEW YORK — With a hip crowd jamming the bleachers of a cavernous Manhattan pier warehouse in the week's most buzzed-about fashion show, a set of mirrors placed in strategic locations to emulate a modern-day Stonehenge, dramatic lighting and a bevy of supermodels led by the incomparable — controversial — Gisele Bundchen, I could have sworn that I was watching a Marc Jacobs show.

Jacobs always draws the most attention during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week because he sets the trends that everyone follows with a lavish production featuring top models, innovative sets and widely emulate runway looks.

But there may be a changing of the guard.

It wasn't Jacobs who was drawing all the attention Saturday night. (His show comes Monday). Instead, Alexander Wang was the focus of the adoring crowd with a tightly choreographed show that had plenty for fashion tastemakers to marvel about.

Wang's 2012 fall collection was hard-edged but shiny, with high-tech fabrics of lacquered wool, waxed suede and bonded leather. (Like Jacobs, Wang experiments with new, unusual fabrics.) Many of the outfits were all-black or all-white, with a few oxblood patterns to break up the monocromatic shades.

With a lot of boxy shapes and some loose styles, the collection had more of a tough girl vibe than a sexpot attitude, although a series of shrink-wrapped jacquard knits in frayed patterns hugged the body and arms.

It had a couple of sure-to-be best-selling handbags, including an oversized tote that resembles a doctor's bag.

And it had Gisele.

Program notes instructed the audience to remain in their seats after the traditional runway walk, indicating something special was left to come.

And sure enough supermodels Gisele Bundchen, Shalom Harlow and Karolina Kurdova, who rarely walk the runways any more, appeared with other models in more mostly black, hard-edge clothes that have commercial appeal. With a sense of purpose (or a plea for vindication?), Bundchen confidently marched out in a high-neck black trenchcoat with a split up the front that will likely be a bestseller.

The models made diagonal patterns around the set, with each ending in front of a big mirror, her reflection illuminated to the audience, which remained strangely quiet.

(The last time I saw the Brazilian supermodel in a fashion week runway show was about five years ago when she led off the Jacobs's show clad in a high-necked blouse and tight skirt in a librarian-about-to-be-unleashed collection.)

Bundchen, who raised such a ruckus when she came to the defense of her husband, New England Patroits quarterback Tom Brady, and threw the F-bomb at critics after the team's narrow loss at the Super Bowl, declined to comment further about the incident when asked about it backstage after the show.

But she flashed the peace sign to a Boston Herald fashion writer.