Before the Heatherette show, during Fall 2005 New York Fashion Week, the paparazzi are doing what paparazzi do best: stalking their quarry with the determination of psychotic bounty hunters.

The victime du moment was a distressingly underfed Tory Spelling -- you could have cut diamonds with her shoulder blades -- who was caught in a potentially life-threatening crush while trying to get to her seat.

Now with a financial backer, Heatherette's collection has gone from glue-gunned gestalt to gonzo Galliano. Alerted to the fact that this was going to be a hyped event, fashionistas and hangers-on were cat-fighting for seats.

Frowning disapproval

Mad crush No. 2 was taking place a few feet away where celebrity puppet, Miss Piggy, was seated between fashion scribe Lynn Yaeger, who resembles a gloomy, rotund Victorian doll, and publicist Lizzie Grubman, best known for backing over royalty and riffraff with an SUV.

"Look at the three fabulous fashion piggies!" I gushed to my friend Isabel, who frowned with disapproval. "At least two of them need a jowl lift," she hissed. "But I'm having trouble telling them apart."

The hottest fashion PR company in NYC, People's Revolution, was handling some of the week's best shows, and its tempestuous leader, Kelly Cutrone was dogged by an E! Channel camera crew wherever she went. At Jeremy Scott's show, Ms. Cutrone was a whirling dervish, booting C-list stylists out of front-row seats to make way for A-list editors. She never once stopped shouting out names to the E! cameras, as if she were reciting a 21st-century version of "The Andy Warhol Diaries" index. "Look who it is! Parker Posey, Susanne Bartsch and Rufus Wainwright! And a fashion writer for Elle -- she's doing several stories on my clients!"

Mr. Scott's collection, titled "Iron Butterfly," began with hip-hop warrior looks and segued into an unashamed homage to the camp celluloid classic "Mahogany," whose wardrobe was conceived by Diana Ross. Backstage, the designer, who hails from Kansas City, was giving interviews and air kisses. Known for his cartoonish ego and his affection for "Dynasty"-esque '70s Americana trash, Jeremy was sporting a corn-row hairdo and speaking with a drawl that oozed mid-American ennui as he flatly denied the "Mahogany" reference while openly admitting to a lifelong obsession with tracking down the film's costumes.

At Imitation of Christ, Patrick McDonald, NYC's most photographed dandy, held court amid a blinding barrage of camera flashes. Mr. McDonald, a renowned celebrity magnet, proffered his glacier-sized bijou for kisses as Pat Cleveland, Tommy Tune, the band Interpol, Stockard Channing and Carol Channing all stopped by to say hi.

Leering lasciviously

Skinny starlet Mary-Kate Olsen, being too young and sheltered to know a dandy from a dachshund, passed him by only to be seated sadistically in front of a giant window that faced the sidewalk. During the entire show, in which models sauntered out before a Damien Hirst pill mural, rabid paparazzi and random stalkers gathered in front of the window across from Ms. Olsen, taking photos or merely leering lasciviously.

The audience's attention was distracted from this spectacle momentarily -- no one was really looking at the clothes -- when the singing duo Mother Inc. sprung onto the catwalk to perform a little ditty. "They're beasts!" Mr. McDonald hissed in my ear, sounding for a moment as if he were possessed by the spirit of Truman Capote.

After the show, McDonald and I stopped by the Oak Room at the maybe-doomed Plaza Hotel to suck down a few sidecars, causing us to miss Jennifer Lopez's apparently spectacular runway show.

But, this being New York, where fashion week adheres to neither calendar nor parameter, we were treated to a surprise appearance by Naomi Campbell, who swept into the venerable bar with a coterie of swarthy men in black and the masochistic assistant du jour.

Blackberry beat-down

"Maybe there'll be another Blackberry beat-down," McDonald said, referring to gossip about the fiery model allegedly clobbering one of her minions with the latest in wireless technology.

In spite of the sidecars, somehow we made it to J-Lo's after-party, where Ms. Campbell swept over to the divine Ms. J to offer congratulations and to check her makeup in the refection of J's mammoth sunglasses.

"I wish Miss Piggy was here!" I moaned. "You can't have everything, darling," McDonald said, handing me yet another sidecar. "You're spoiled." Within the surreal circus that is New York Fashion Week, it's hard not to be.