With the blizzard blowing away my hopes of getting to New York for the early Fashion Week shows, I did what so many other fashion aficionados now do: I picked up my iPad and watched the shows streaming live online.

That way, at least, I could get some sense of the clothes in motion — not just the still snapshots, front view only, which have become fodder for bloggers.

This first view of the winter 2013 collections had some upbeat moments. But I still felt uneasy about the difficulty of analyzing fabrics, recognizing true colors and allowing my own eyes to follow the pieces that interested me.