Your nagging questions answered.

Today marks the beginning of New York fashion week (Sept. 9-16), during which designers will launch their Spring 2006 collections. In 2004, the Slate staff found that many of us were perplexed by the annual event: Is fashion week, as one editor put it, "a snooty scam perpetrated by New Yorkers on poor slobs elsewhere"? Or is it an occasion for designers to present their artistic ideas and try to influence taste? We asked Josh Patner—fashion journalist, former assistant designer for Donna Karan, and co-founder of the popular label Tuleh—to answer these and other burning questions. (Stay tuned for Monday's Part 2, in which Patner explains such fashion mysteries as what stylists do, why models walk like that, and whether they eat at all.)