Is it Fashion Week if Julia Restoin Roitfeld doesn't design an invitation?

We don't think so.

Last season, she beckoned fashion kids to Peter Som's Spring '08 show (which boasted a beautiful custom lip color from Lancome, and a last breather before Mr. Som took the helm at Bill Blass).

The year before, she created a heart-stamped Luella leaflet informing the chosen cool kids - Agyness, Camilla Belle, Leigh Lezark - that they were needed at the Hotel on Rivington for Ms. Bartley's bash with Teen Vogue.

And now?

Julia's hooked up with Frank Tell, a nascent designer whose apprenticeships ThreeAsFour and Sue Stemp will be tested with his very first independent presentation, at the Tribeca Grand on February 2nd.

We hear Julia's designed the invitation for 21-year-old Mr. Tell, and her friend Keegan Singh, a stylist for Vogue and Teen Vogue will helm all the models' costume changes.

It should be a very hip crowd and hopefully Mr. Tell's Fall '08 collection will match...

NYLON gets everything these days -

In addition to Faran, the beauty team over there got their pretty hands on ten bottles of the only-sold-in-Europe nail polish, Blue Poison by Dior.

But because everybody over there is so cool, they're going to give them away to the ten funniest people who can act faster than the bottles disappear.

E-mail sweeps@nylonmag.com, include all your info and write "Blue" in the subject line.

Oh, and yeah, include the best dirty joke you can think of - only the ones that make the NYLON staff do spit takes have the chance to win (we're not making this up).

Get going!

"I loved fashion. But I wasn't a very good student...Failed typing, failed draping, you know. I had a little ADD problem. Sewing? Oh, forget it. I burnt my dress. They told me I would never make it as a fashion designer at all." - Donna Karan, on her beginning in fashion at Parsons.

We're bummed and we adore them, but stay tuned - they'll be on an NBC special called "Fashion on Ice" on January 20th (or didn't you know that Richie Rich was once a professional figure skater)?

Update:

Heatherette prefers not to comment on why they've chosen not to show, citing only business reconfiguration reasons, but they promise to be back in September for a relaunch, and they'll still be launching their highly anticipated M.A.C for Heatherette collection this Spring.

There are also whispers about an afterparty, even without an actual show, which sounds a little bit like the bash without the Bat Mitzvah... which sounds sort of perfect and awesome.

We'll keep you posted!

One of the challenges of New York Fashion Week is the sheer number of capable designers trying to mount their own work.

Since over a hundred catwalks and presentations get rolled out during the week, it's inevitable that some very stylish traffic jams will occur, and as of now, the first takes place on Thursday, January 31st.

At 5 pm, young designer Catherine Holstein (left) mounts her first full presentation at Milk Studios in the Meatpacking District. Ms. Holstein is a Teen Vogue darling with the personal style of a rock star's girlfriend and the posse of a regular Miu Miu shopper - Victoria Traina, Mary Kate, and the rest of the blondes too fabulous to be believed.

But also at 5pm is the second showing of Jen Kao, a recent design graduate whose beadwork and black eyeliner has also caught the eye of Teen Vogue, as well as Nylon and a steady stream of Beatrice-going socialites, not to mention the model Darla Baker, who's one of the designer's muses. She's also friends with Ryan McGinley, who was enlisted last year to shoot the look book.

And again at 5pm, there's Band of Outsiders, the ridiculously cool / successful / buzzy label by Scott Sternberg, a former Hollywood agent who's since garnered a CFDA nomination and a steady following of celebrities like Cameron Diaz, Vogue editors like Sally Singer, and... well really, if you have those two people in your clothing corner, you don't really need that much else.

Then at 6 it's time for EarthPledge, the eco-fashion show to boast clothes by Givenchy, Stella McCartney, and just about every label from Barneys.

Are you tired yet?

A dickie, (no giggles, please), is a sweater or dress with a removable collar and cuffs. It gives the illusion of wearing a blouse underneath an outer layer without suffering the inevitable bunch up.

We thought dickies were for another generation, as in they've never really seemed fashion forward.

A couple of months ago, we saw a dickie at the Marc store, followed by a string of Tory Burch sweater versions. Then, just this past week, we encountered a dickie dress from See By Chloe, one of our favorite lines. What's going on here?

We understand the practicality - it's like two pieces in one!

But there's something so old-fashioned (and kind of funny) about it - plus, we've perfected the art of comfortably layering a thin sweater over our favorite Steven Alan button-down anyway. So what's the point?

Would you wear a dickie? Or do you think you're layering skills are enough?

Tuesday's launch of Armani's first beauty line for men has us thinking - who buys this stuff?

It's been our experience (ahem), that men tend to just borrow their girlfriends' products, often times a surreptitious act while in the shower.

But we keep reading about beauty lines intended specifically for men, especially by non-drugstore companies.

Clinique, Frederic Fekkai and Bliss are just a few beauty brands with products intended specifically "for men." But we've never known any guys to actually buy themselves men's beauty products. In fact, when we have seen guys buy skin care/hair stuff, we've seen them in Duane Reade, buying gender neutral options like Neutrogena.

We don't know if this is an embarrassment of doing something "girly," or if men's products are sort of pointless, as if men's skin and hair is really so much different from women's, for whom most beauty products are made.

Do you buy men's beauty products, either for yourself, or for a boyfriend? Or does it strike you as the same stuff but in darker packaging?

When we spot a Cartier LOVE bracelet, we usually think of Elizabeth Taylor and the great pile of them she must have accumulated.

We're totally forget that their design was inspired by the chastity belts warriors locked onto their wives in Medieval England.

It's almost unsettling that the bracelet's design of screws, meant permanently lock on the wrist of a lover, has come to represent such a strong symbol of love.

So in this strange case of Adventures in Copyright, we're going to go ahead and say that Forever 21 makes a little bit more sense.

Their Polished Love Bangle is the same size and width of Cartier's, but they've foregone screws in favor of simply engraving the word "LOVE" around it.

And for $5.80, literally .03% of the price of Cartier's, you can rock an armful of love bangles with your new Marc by Marc spring dress.

Now that's love.

"The only person who might have known was Michael Kors." - Kevin, from Project Runway, explaining that if he had hemmed his bias-cut, silk georgette dress, it would have puckered - something he felt the judges didn't realize.

One of our littlest but incredibly persistent peeves about this week's Project Runway was the robot-like walk that every single model gave down the runway.

We know they're high school students that probably don't have modeling experience at all - but still. No one expected a serious cat strut (not even the real models on the show give us that,) but at least a natural walk would have been nice.

But it seems the tension that came across on screen may have had to do with real-life events on the show:

WWD reveals that one of the models fainted due to the "intense heat and high heels," which the show obviously edited out.

We're not sure who the girl in question is, we're more concerned with the fact that nothing on the show even hinted at this bit of drama - it kind of makes you wonder what else is edited from the show...

WWD reports that Valentino is looking to the 90's for the final ad campaign before his scheduled retirement.

The campaign features models Amber Valletta and Shalom Harlow, who appeared as a duo frequently in the 90's, most notably on the March 1997 cover of Vogue.

The campaign will also include Raquel Zimmerman, Anja Rubik, and male models Oriol Elcacho and Michael Gandolfi. But we're most excited to see Shalom and Amber together again -

Maybe there'll be a surprise appearance by Cindy?

We doubt it, but stay tuned for the pics anyway...