While working on this season's collection for Heatherette, designer Travis Rains said he listened non-stop to the Dreamgirls soundtrack. "I had [it] on constant rotation to get me through the late nights at the studio," he said. Too bad Beyonce's current chart topper, "Irreplaceable," is not on that album, since it sounds like a veritable paean to Fashion Week: "To the left, to the left, everything you own in a box to the left!"

At Marc Bouwer the day before, there were no animal skins, but several anti-fur slogans projected onto the walls. Rue McClanahan showed up in front row. The former Golden Girl is an animal lover and a couturier herself - her clothing line "A Touch of Rue" caters to women of a certain age. "I think all of us are animal lovers, but most of us don't think about what it means to be wearing their pelts on our backs," she said. "I love you too, but I don't want to skin 'ya!" Blanche Devereaux, Ms. McClanahan's character on the long-running sitcom, was known for her flowing billowy blouses and clickety-clack heels. The show has been in syndication for over a decade, but when Ms. McClanahan and a couple of her cast mates recently made an appearance at a Barnes and Noble book signing, "there were hordes of twentysomething and teenage girls screaming like they were rock stars," said Jim Colucci, author of the book The Q Guide to The Golden Girls. "It was hysterical." Ms. McClanahan doesn't get the whole stoic horse walk of girls on the runways these days. "I could never be a model," she said. "Because I could not be that bland and personality-less. I'd respond to the crowd: 'hiya, how ya doin'!!'"

Clothes are not inherently perishable, but fashion is and in the rag trade, could there be such thing as "too much?" This was the question on many people's minds on Saturday night at Cipriani, where the L.A.-based company Rock and Republic showed its collection - after a lavish spread of bellinis, battered shrimp and tuna tartar. The show was an hour and a half late in getting underway, largely because guests ignored announcements to take their seats and kept on boozing and chomping. Then came the show: a parade of neo-streetwalker wear. "Sexy, man," said the designer Michael Ball backstage afterwards. "Every woman has that sexy beast in her and she should bring it out once and a while. When she wears Rock, she's gonna be sexy." And who, exactly, is the woman who will wear those clothes? "Uhm, let's see, in terms of what?" he said. "Like on the street?"

She wasn't wrong.

They were crushed into the Garden of Ono the other night--that fine place where apparently Gisele once broke a slender wrist--to celebrate the glisteningly new Daily Mini, a petite monthly spin-off of Fashion Week Daily.  read more »