>> Loic Prigent's The Day Before series, documenting the 48 hours before Proenza Schouler, Fendi, Jean Paul Gaultier, and Sonia Rykiel shows, doesn't air on the Sundance Channel until Sept. 9, but they've put up 11 clips total spanning the four segments, and the entire Fendi episode has leaked to YouTube — watch here.  A couple of favorite clips below: the first in which Karl Lagerfeld's muse Amanda Harlech yells for some music, initiating the Fendi employees' seasonal late night fashion show — one male staffer even wobbles the runway in vertiginous Fendi heels; the second in which Proenza Schouler's clearly nervous Jack McCullough — who yearns for a cheeseburger — and "fidgeting" Lazaro Hernandez are inclined to physically touch every look backstage before it goes out on the runway.  Ikram boutique' Ikram Goldman calls it "blessing" the garment.

The video clips! »

>> Soon after Maybelline announced it would be be taking over from five-year Bryant Park cosmetics sponsor MAC, MAC — presumedly, as New York Times' Eric Wilson put it, tired of having to share "a rather circuslike stage with other sponsors who were competing for attention, sometimes including makers of doughnuts, cameras, toilets and Big Macs" — announced that it would be producing the tentatively-titled MAC and Milk Fashion Week with Milk Studios at the same time as the traditional New York Fashion Week.

The event can be seen as either a complement or a competitor to Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, but on the record, anyway, there seem to be no hard feelings.  Milk Studios founder Mazdack Rassi says of the initiative: "This week is not an alternative show space, it's a way of cultivating designers and helping them come up with new ways of selling their clothes."  And Zach Eichman, a VP of IMG Fashion, which produces the shows at Bryant Park, told the New York Times last week the company welcomed the MAC and Milk event and that bus service between shows would be available when possible. “We can’t do every show in the tents. We hope they will be successful.”

Alexander Wang will be there, so will Preen »

>> This morning, the CFDA held its first town hall meeting, moderated by CFDA president Diane von Furstenberg, to discuss whether Fashion Week is still relevant.  Many attendees agreed with Proenza Schouler's Jack McCollough, who voiced his concern: "There seems to be a disconnect. For us, the shows have become a press thing. It’s on blogs; magazines pull straight from the runways; and by the time it’s in stores, it feels sort of old."

Donna Karan, who has long been a proponent of selling and showing clothes in season, also wondered about the timeliness of the shows: "We are in a crisis. There's no question about it . . . We spend so much money on shows, but what is it getting us?”

Anna Wintour suggests something illegal »

>> Kiefer Sutherland Will Not Be Charged for Headbutting Jack McCollough —Although Jack McCollough and Kiefer Sutherland issued a joint statement resolving their differences back in May (Kiefer allegedly headbutted Jack after the Costume Institute Gala in early May), the case wasn't officially closed until today.  The Manhattan's District Attorney dropped all charges because McCollough "was quite uncooperative" with the prosecutors. [People, AP]

>> INSIDER WIRE —Loic Prigent, director of cult fashion documentaries Marc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton and Signe Chanel, has been enlisted by the Sundance Channel for four-part original series The Day Before, following four different designers in the 36-hour period leading up to their runway shows. The series, to air on four consecutive nights starting Sept. 10 at 10 pm, covers Sonia Rykiel’s 40th anniversary celebration in Paris in October 2008, Proenza Schouler in New York in February 2009, Fendi by Karl Lagerfeld in Milan in March 2009, and Jean Paul Gaultier’s Fall 2009 couture show in Paris in July of this year. [Glamour]

>> INSIDER WIRE —Barneys has been seeing a lot of camera time lately: Liya Kebede shops there in Proenza Schouler's Cruise 2010 video, and yesterday, Terry Richardson was photographing Catherine McNeil, in black Lanvin dress, bird on her shoulder, on the main floor in New York. [The Shophound]

>> Proenza Schouler spent yesterday in Florence debuting their Cruise 2010 collection with the help of three artists: Kalup Linzy, whose video with Liya Kebede and Chloe Sevigny we saw yesterday — he also photographed himself, Liya, and Chloe in Renaissance-style pictures that were on display, one with Liya as Mona Lisa; Haim Steinbach, who creates spatial collages using found objects, was asked to focus on the resort accessories and placed them on a span of white carpet in the Medici villa courtyard along with a bed frame, dog toys, and plastic onions; and performance artist Kembra Pfahler, who with 20 local Italian women donned Proenza Schouler bodysuits, body paint, and sang with her glam rock band The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black.

“For Pitti W, we knew wanted an old-school, iconic artist like Haim, someone very contemporary like Kalup, and with Kembra we had so much in common,” Lazaro Hernandez told Vogue. “She connected with this idea of surf culture, as she is from Malibu, which is where we found a lot of inspiration for the collection.”

Showing in the future »