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A model holds the first-ever digital clutch, created by Vivienne Tam and HP, as... (Stuart Ramson)

NEW YORK — High fashion has stubbornly resisted cutting-edge technology, in favor of faxes and clipboards.

But change is occurring, and it's never been more evident than during this Fashion Week season in New York.

Consider that an HP laptop made its debut on the New York fashion runway this week, Google set up a kiosk alongside fashion designers, and Microsoft is displaying products along with high-end fashion purveyors like Kiehl's and Coach.

People today want not just their clothes, but also their homes, their cars, their cell phones and now their PCs to reflect their personal sense of fashion and style, said Rob Poznanski, senior marketing manager at Microsoft.

The Hewlett-Packard computer from Silicon Valley, set to go on sale this spring, was carried by a model during the Vivienne Tam show Tuesday night at Bryant Park. Tam, known for infusing her clothes with Asian art sensibilities and fabrications, designed the laptop to appeal to women. It looks like a clutch decorated in a red peony print.

"Technology can make fashion sexy, and fashion can make technology sexy," said Satjiv S. Chahil, HP's senior vice president for global marketing. He was backstage after the runway show with Tam, who was holding the laptop like a purse while chatting with well-wishers, friends and press.

This collaboration, like so much in high fashion, is about sponsors. The Palo Alto company helped underwrite Tam's show in return for her input into the notebook's design. A runway show can cost $25,000 to $50,000 just to rent the venue for an hour or so during Fashion Week.

"We felt there is nothing more important in people's lives then their computer," Chahil said, "and too much of tech is still very male-oriented. She [Tam] is integrating fashionable design with what we offer in the way of technology."

Microsoft, too, is making itself known this week in New York. The Seattle-based company is sponsoring a retreat apartment on West 30th Street for fashion editors, and it's presided over by celebrity stylist Robert Verdi. The theme is "Great American Style," which means the space is filled with displays of goods from brands such as Kiehl's, Hershey's, Coach and, of course, Microsoft.

"We decided that great American style should be about historic American brands, and what other brand represents tech more than Microsoft?" Verdi rhetorically asks.

Displayed around the retreat space are floral-covered Asus F6V PCs that emit a fragrance once the computer fires up and the purse-like Ego Orphine decorated with Swarovski crystals. It retails for $15,000 to $20,000. "Let's face it,'' said David Wolfe, creative director of the Doneger Group, a trend-forecasting agency, "we've become so design conscious that we want everything to be about aesthetics." On Wednesday, a new sponsor entered the tent: Google. The Mountain View company is the first Silicon Valley presence with a kiosk inside, sharing space with Havaiana and Judith Ripka.

"It's important for us to build a bridge between fashion and technology, and as hard as it was to get sponsor space, here we are," said Michaela Prescott, product manager for Google.

The search engine is promoting its iGoogle feature that personalizes the search page for users. Designers such as Michael Kors, Anna Sui, Vera Wang and Tory Burch have designed what looks like a strip of wallpaper for a theme page. It's part of Google's attempt to integrate artists with the company, Prescott said.

It's not just computers and catwalks that are making the fashion and tech collaboration evident.

Designer Marc Bouwer premiered his runway show this week not at Bryant Park or another Manhattan space but virtually at MarcBouwer.com. The Webcast can now be seen with a click by everyone.

''Before the Internet, fashion was very, very exclusive," he said. "It's too difficult to build your brand with all the competition, so why not let technology help? Let everyone have instant access to the looks and trends for the next season. Not just editors." Bouwer, who is best known for dressing celebrities for red-carpet events, said presenting a virtual show was less pressure and less expensive.

Newcomer Thuy Diep, whose label, Thuy, debuted just a few seasons ago, showed for the first time in Bryant Park and is already thinking in terms of i-commerce. Thuy, who is Vietnamese-American and from Southern California, has worked for such names as Carolina Herrera and Zac Posen. Privately funded and still relatively unknown, Diep said she is launching an e-commerce component to her site, thuynewyork.com., in a few weeks where customers can buy pieces from her fall line.

"There will be more adventurous pieces available online that won't be in stores," she said.

In perhaps the best example of fashion finally "getting" tech, KCD Worldwide, a producer of some of the biggest runway shows in New York, is testing out a new "Events GPS" system that electronically organizes invitations and RSVPs for the thousands of people vying for show tickets.

The objective is to make the crazy chaos and mob scenes of Fashion Week manageable by using bar codes and scanners to halt party crashers and keep track of VIPs. It's a long way from the usual method that most fashion show production companies use: manually plugging in invited guests into a seating chart weeks before the event, and minutes before showtime insisting that people stand in line and wait to be checked in by frantic staffers toting large clipboards with lists of names.

Nevertheless, during the shows KCD produced this week, including Marc Jacobs and Diane von Furstenberg, clipboards were still common.