......Last week you could find designers working at all hours in their studios. What television shows like "Project Runway" fail to record is the tedium and black humor of the studio, the small scene. On Friday at 6 p.m. the workers in Ralph Rucci's sample room - some of the finest hands in the city, including two finishers he had flown in from Paris - pushed back their couture silks and ate plates of Chinese food from Pig Heaven. Mr. Rucci serves a buffet every night so his staff can work late to finish his ready-to-wear and haute couture collections. Last night cannelloni was on the menu.
Few American labels have displayed more spontaneity than Libertine, the four-year-old line of Cindy Green and Johnson Hartig, who will have their second show, on Sept. 16, the closing day of Fashion Week. Last Friday, while Mr. Hartig worked on spring clothes at his home in Los Angeles, Ms. Green shipped fall orders and waited for his arrival, when they'll silk-screen the collection. The partners now have 25 retail accounts, mostly in Europe and Japan, and one very satisfied customer, Karl Lagerfeld, who owns 19 Libertine jackets.
"His picture is on our wall of honor," Ms. Green said, indicating the refrigerator door in her Crosby Street studio. She acknowledged that the challenge is to reinvent Libertine, a label that reinvented vintage. "It's easy because we're tired of what we're doing, and it's hard because it still works," she said. "We're going a lot more elegant and refined."
At 1:30 p.m. that same day, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, the Proenza Schouler designers, took a taxi uptown to check on clothes in a factory. Unlike Mr. Rucci and Oscar de la Renta, they do not have their own sample room. They send their 200 samples out to be made and then fit them and sew on the buttons in their Chinatown studio. Mr. Hernandez and Mr. McCollough, who began their collection with a trip to Mexico that led them to think about the Arts and Crafts movement, said they are ahead of schedule. "We left the office last night at like 5," Mr. McCollough said.
At the factory they looked at an elegant silver-taupe coat with pale embroidery.
"This is very Anna," one of them said, referring to Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue. The other nodded.
The factory manager, a stout young man, murmured, "I can totally picture her in it."
On Thursday around 3 p.m., Ashleigh Verrier, a former intern at Proenza Schouler, who is having her first show, was in her studio on Seventh Avenue, running through her 12 looks with a stylist, Daniela Paudice.
"We're having a little drama about the shoes," said Ms. Verrier, who was using Prada pumps for the fittings. She sold her design school graduation collection to Saks and Nordstrom (130 garments). Inspired this season by 1930's seaside clothes, Ms. Verrier said she is financing her business, including her $4,000 monthly rent, with a loan and family money.
That afternoon around 1 p.m. Secret Service agents arrived at 550 Seventh Avenue in advance of a visit to Oscar de la Renta's showroom by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who had an appointment for 2 p.m. "I should put on a tie," Mr. de la Renta said, getting up from a light lunch of tomatoes and mozzarella.
Mr. de la Renta, who started his business in 1965 with Ben Shaw, observed that 10 years ago his company sold $7 million worth of clothes. "Now we're doing $7 million a month wholesale," he said. "I have a completely different business today."
He also has a new group of assistants: Linda Waddington, who came from Gucci; Natalie Ratabesi, who worked for Ralph Lauren and John Galliano; and Rebecca de Ravenal. They were in the studio, observing a model pacing the aisle in a Delft-blue sundress with the designer's right hand, John Nickleson. Mr. Nickleson has the demeanor of a cowboy who has driven many herds up the trail.
As the models changed into pencil skirts and skimmy tops, Mr. de la Renta said that Ms. Ratabesi had been surprised to see him on his knees pinning a dress. Apparently she hadn't seen a designer do that. He laughed.
At 2 p.m., informed that Ms. Rice had canceled her visit, Mr. de la Renta took off his tie. The White House was battling criticism all day that Ms. Rice, on vacation in New York, was not attentive to the Hurricane Katrina crisis. She returned to Washington.
On Tuesday around 11:30 a.m., Narciso Rodriguez, wearing shorts and a T-shirt, sat a few feet from a model in a loose, double-layered dress. Next to him was a table piled with Polaroids. On the other side was Camilla Nickerson, a fashion editor who styles his shows. He got up and looked critically at the back of the dress, conferred with a seamstress, then sat back down and lighted a cigarette.
Mr. Rodriguez, whose collection was inspired by swimwear and 30's evening dresses but gradually embraced naïve shapes and transparency, was asked what color he would call the layered dress.
"Pumice?" he said with affected delicacy. He glanced at Ms. Nickerson.
She smiled and almost inaudibly said, "Carbon monoxide poisoning."
On Chrystie Street it was nearly 8 p.m. when Ms. Stoddard finished her spray-painting. Mr. Bradley liked a leather swatch but suggested she put it in the dryer. "You know what I'm saying - crafty R.I.S.D.," he said, leaning back on the bed. He didn't know when he would be finished. Not that it mattered. "When you're really a designer, of course, you're going to be doing it one second before the show," he said.
