All this week we’ve been delving into the heart of Fashion Week in New York City, trying to answer the existential question posed by a recent awards show: does fashion, in fact, rock? Is there anything raw and transgressive about a cocktail dress, or leg warmers? From now on, all of our reports from Fashion Week will include our patented Fashion Rock-o-Meter (TM) to help you decide.

Tonight, we decided we needed to go a little further afield, away from the shows that a member of Interpol might attend, so we hit designer Catherine Malandrino’s show. You philistines may recognize Malandrino from Project Runway. She’s like a caricature of the perfect female fashion designer; she’s beautiful, impeccably put together, and so totally French she says “Preeence” when talking about His Purpleness (Watch the video here — RealPlayer required) We love her and want to be or marry her pretty much immediately. We spoke with her backstage before the showing of her Spring collection at Roseland Ballroom, and she explained how the music for this show needed to put her audience “in an urban mode.”

How did she accomplish this? Via Talking Heads and Brian Ferry tunes put together by DJ to the fashion stars Michealangelo L’Acqua, with whom we also chatted for a while (Watch the video here — RealPlayer required). No free dresses yet, but we’re working on it.