The days following a fashion show are a relief for the designer and his or her runway production team, but the busiest time for retailers and sales reps. After all, the clothes would never make it past editorial spreads if someone didn't work hard to bring them to local fashion emporiums. Curious to see fashion week from a different angle, the retailer's point of view, I tagged along with Heiji Choy Black of Hejfina on a buying appointment for...

Every year, models from the Midwest try to make it in the international fashion scene, walking in shows in Milan and Paris and then they go back to … swimming practice and SAT prep courses. That's right, most runway models, especially the neophytes, are barely old enough to drive. With the fashion show cycle over for this season, I decided to check in with two new girls, both Chicago residents who signed with Ford Models and are doing well. Keep your eye out for their faces next time you're flipping through your favorite fashion glossy...

Lanvin is much adored for its female-flattering looks. At the entrance of the show on Sunday, as I watched the editors come in, I was strangely reminded of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. No one was in drag mind you (although the Paris Vogue editors certainly can work a bondage look!), but it was more that cult feeling. Women come to the Lanvin show knowing all the words to the song and knowing they will like what they hear...

If good manners means starting your fashion show on time, Marc Jacobs has become the fashion equivalent of Emily Post. Scolded by critics for his notorious tardiness in previous seasons, he now aims for precision, by golly. This afternoon we received an e-mail from the press contact: "The show will start at 2:30 p.m. sharp." Well, I arrived sweatily at the courtyard of the Louvre at...

Leave it to Karl Lagerfeld to deliver on so many levels: great invitation, swag, celeb turnout, and set. And yes, even great clothes (with the exception of some 80s metallic prom dresses at the end, complete with poofy sleeves. Really, Karl? Really?)

Since the last few seasons have featured elaborate sets—remember the carousel?—an invite like this forcibly gets you thinking about what will be in store. Well, some invites you really can judge by their cover—it ended up being exactly true to what arrived in my mailbox...

A funny thing happened at the Akris show. I saw something that I just never, ever expected to see: a jumpsuit. Actually, there were several.

When buttoned-up Akris is showing jumpsuits, you just know that the trend has legs. (Har har. Sorry.) And unfortunately, those legs are attached to the top. And as any girl who has tried to use a public bathroom in a jumpsuit knows, this is kinda annoying. I mean, really, how would a jumpsuit work...

My friends in the States are always so impressed when I tell them that many fashion shows happen at the Louvre. But really, it's down in the bowels of the museum, where there's a mall rather than artwork. Sephora and Virgin Records are right next door. Trust me, it's not atmospheric. Even if...

Dior is one of the few shows where the models walk the way people imagine fashion models walk—all attitude, like Derek Zoolander. I watched with surprise as the big name girls, usually so cool on the catwalk, strutted and pranced. Each one put her own bit of flair into her final pose for the photogs—a coquettish popped shoulder here, an arm sliding from hip to thigh there...

If you're like me and have been following fashion weeks in London and Milan on the Web, well, it's been an interesting juxtaposition, hasn't it? Extravagant fashion shows happening at the same time as political drama and a tanking economy.

As headlines told of collapse on Wall Street, the models in Milan were toppling, too—because the shoes were so high and monstrously large. Anyway, now we're in Paris, and things seem to be...

The song "I Want Candy" was used on a handful of runways this season, most often in the 80s incarnation by the group Bow Wow Wow. I'm sure it's popular because it's upbeat and girly, but the fact that designers are repeatedly using a song released more than 20 years ago (and was used quite recently, and to memorable effect in Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette) seems indicative of the biggest problem at the New York shows: a please-everyone mentality...

Fashion week is strange. Months and months of work go into a show that happens once and lasts 15 minutes. (After Calvin Klein, I saw some PR girls dramatically collapsing into each other, saying, "It's over, it's really over."). Seeing celebrities starts to feel quite natural, and the fashion people you see every day start to feel like family—albeit a strange sort of family that follows you around every day but rarely speaks to you...

Sitting in close proximity with strangers on bleachers for several hours a day, you overhear things while waiting for a show to start. Yesterday, I overheard one retailer, who was perhaps in her 50s, talking about how fashion has changed so much since she began in the business. "There just isn't that one defining look of the season that you have to have now," she said...

Chaos. That was the scene at the New York Armory at Lexington and 25th, where Marc Jacobs held both of his shows (one for his main collection and another for his Marc by Marc line). Spindly-heeled passengers spilled out of black cars gathered in a giant bottleneck. Flashbulbs were going off everywhere. Walking to the armory from the East Village, I rounded the corner and heard a man say in his thick New York accent, "Look over dere. It's all the fashionistas, goin' to see...

MARC JACOBS
I was speaking with a few fashion friends who are European, and they were saying how visiting New York makes them feel like they're in a movie. What New York gives them is a strong emotional experience. This is what fashion, at its best, should do. Marc Jacobs delivered that on Monday night, judging by the reactions of hard-nosed editors and reporters. Definitely a YSL tribute mixed with so many other elements: a tribute to America, to the American abroad. And all this set to Gershwin music! It slayed me...

Two days feels like two weeks when you are counting your life in high-heel time. Let me explain high-heel time. High-heel time moves like regular time if you're seated. If you're walking, it feels double as long as normal time. And during those moments spent shuffling oh-so-slowly down the bleachers and towards the door—leaving a fashion show is very similar to leaving a small concert—high-heel time means...