If the fizzy thrill of Fashion Week is distilled from a mash of clothes, models, celebrities, champagne, manic behavior and music (in more or less in that order), then inveterate media watchers are more than happy to let the gay parade go by unnoticed in order to focus on the object of their own talmudic obsession: unlocking the logic of the seating chart.

In no other creative field at no other moment, I would argue, is the relative worth of all the players as calculated and crystallized as it is in the ascending tiers of editors dispassionately observing a show. While a seat assignment in the front row has been blown out of a proportion as a sign that one has truly made it in this life, the seating chart as a whole is still overlooked as a map of your place within the (fashion) media firmament -- the product of publicist-scholars who have spent dozens of hours taking into account your publication, your title, your relationships with the designer and your colleague, and simply whether you have buzz or not.

I spent three seasons at Women's Wear Daily on the media beat, which meant that I had an amusing blend of immense institutional power (WWD is The New York Times of the fashion world, even more so than the Times itself) and relatively little of my own. I was fortunate enough to be invited to more than a few shows, and even landed in the front row of a pair of lesser-but-not-obscure designers (which is why I tend to think such prized placement a little overrated.)

From my usual perch in the fifth or sixth row of the shows I managed to attend, I began to understand that behind the boldfaced editors in the front row, great swaths of fashion news editors, accessories and market editors, bookings editors and stylists were arrayed behind them. I started thinking in terms of fashion's "Four Families" (the NYC mafia reference is intentional): Vogue, W/WWD, Harper's Bazaar and Elle. After that came the gangs from The New York Times, Lucky and In Style, not to mention the lone wolf critics, fashion reporters from the regional newspapers, the foreign editors and London newspaper critics, all the way on down to the TV producers, and fashion bloggers. But it was never clear how these seating charts were put together, or who the savants able to keep the whole status equation of the fashion world in their heads really were.

So this Spring 2007 fashion season, mediabistro.com asked a handful of designers to explain the logic and the artistry of fashion show seating. As expected, all but one shot us down immediately. But James LaForce, one of the founding principals of PR firm LaForce + Stevens, very graciously invited me to visit his office on the eve of Tuesday's Bill Blass show to watch the seating chart be locked in.

I arrived at 7 PM to find LaForce seated at his desk in the firm's war room, where a trio of junior staffers were busy poring over a laminated map of "The Tent" -- the largest venue at Bryant Park's enclosed complex -- upon which several hundred color-coded stickers had been affixed. Attached to each sticker was the name, title, and company/affiliation of the attendee in question. A red dot stood for "American magazines/press, green was for "Foreign" press, a yellow for "retailers/buyers" from Saks, Barneys, Neiman Marcus, etc., a blue stood for "broadcast," and orange stood in for "celebrities/FOD," i.e. Friends of the Designer, Michael Vollbracht.

Two of the three staffers stood on chairs, rattling off names and a string of alphanumeric characters to the third, who was busy inputting them into a Mac. The characters designated sections "A" through "H," while a pair of numbers designated rows and seats. They were in the second-to-last stage of sewing up the seating chart -- the final step, to occur overnight, would be calling each and every person on the list and leaving their seating assignments on their voicemail.

The man in charge of the map, at least when it came to the press contingent at the show, was Chris Constable, a senior account supervisor at L+S and an 11-season veteran of managing fashion show seating. He had been trained in the art of people-arranging by a previous employer, fashion publicist Norma Quinto just as she, in turn, had apprenticed with Kevin Krier, and just as he was training the next generation of L+S staffers in the power structure of the fashion press.

The map represented the culmination of roughly 80 hours of work, a process which began when IMG Fashion, which owns Olympus Fashion Week, handed over its list of press requesting invitations, which L+S and Bill Blass had merged with their own. This combined list formed the basis of initial invitees, who should have promptly RSVPed, with surprise rejections and acceptances shaping and reshaping the final arrangement up until the moment the house lights went down on Tuesday morning. "It's a puzzle," Constable said, "and it always changes from season to season. This person may be here one day," he pointed to an eighth-row seat, "and may be here two days later," moving his finger to the front.

Bill Blass isn't a typical show, in that there were roughly only half the typical number of front-row seats available due to the celebrity/socialite contingent expected to appear, a contingent that in the end would include Joan Rivers, Liza Minelli, Sigourney Weaver, and Janet Jackson along with a "mix of the Establishment and the next wave" of socialites (in the words of Leslie Stevens, the other half of L+S) including Anne Bass, Patty Hearst Shaw and Tinsley Mortimer.

All that left the American press jammed into two sections facing each other at the end of the runway: Sections A and H.

Sitting on one end of the front row in Section H on Tuesday morning at the Blass show were two of the Big Four critics, The Washington Post's Robin Givhan (1) and The International Herald Tribune's Suzy Menkes (2). Of the Big Four's other half, W/WWD's Bridget Foley was also present (see #7, below), while the The New York Times' Cathy Horyn was not. (And, despite winning a Pulitzer for her fashion criticism -- a career-making coup, by journalistic standards -- Givhan is considered to be fourth among these peers, due to The Post's relative lack of status in fashionland.) On one side of the pair was IMG Fashion president Fern Mallis (3), who tirelessly puts in appearances at shows and parties all week, and the International Fashion Syndicate's Marylou Luther (16), who's apparently a roving expert of sorts.

The top-drawer critics, along with their counterparts at Vogue across the runway are always seated "closest to the exit," Constable explained, "because they need to bolt in order to make it to the next show."

Seated diagonally from Menkes and Co., on the eastern edge of Section A, were the editors from WWD. The paper's editor-in-chief, Edward Nardoza (4) and editor, James Fallon (5), were my editors there three years ago. Based on the nametags affixed to the seats, to Nardoza's right should have been Etta Froio, the doyenne of W; to her right, just out of sight, is Foley. To Fallon's left is the Times' Guy Trebay (6). The empty chair to his left was meant for his colleague Eric Wilson who, as it happens, spent eight years at WWD.

Such is WWD's clout during Fashion Week that the paper doesn't wait to be invited to fashion shows: Instead, it sends designers lists of who the paper's top editors would like to bring along. "I like to invite everyone at WWD," Constable said, "and then Bridget [Foley] sends over a list of who we should expect." Nardoza's and Fallon's presences have no immediate consequences for the designer; Foley will write the review if she's present and she will ultimately top-edit it if she is not. Their presence, like that of editorial director Patrick McCarthy (who RSVPed but was ultimately not present) is largely ceremonial. The editors dutifully taking notes fill three rows behind them.

"I'm never quite sure who's writing the review, if Bridget's not there," said Constable. "I have an idea of who's writing it, and if Bridget's not there, and if Meenal [Mistry] or Nan [D'Souza] or Marc [Karimzadeh] is there, then you can sort of tell who is going to be writing the review." D'Souza, a fashion features editor for both W and WWD was slated to be present, as was Karimzadeh, who covers ready-to-wear for the paper. Also in their row was Jessica Kerwin (8), in from Paris (who, judging from the shot below, managed to score a last-minute seat up front), and W accessories director Meggan Crum.

"Accessories editors at a ready-to-wear shows like Bill Blass -- which doesn't have accessories -- need to be moved back," said Constable. "The people covering ready-to-wear (such as Karimzadeh) need to be able to see the clothes. And shoe people sit on the end so they can see down to the floor." Considering this show marked the launch of Bill Blass-labeled shoes, this was an important consideration. Slated to be in the third row behind them were associate Eye editor (i.e. society reporter) Emily Holt and a handful of accessories and market editors. And behind them were the fashion directors of magazines like Cookie, Self, Radar, and Surface, which should give you some idea of WWD's outsized importance.

In fact, it's a lot easier to figure out the first five rows of the press section than the last five (or seven, or ten). Did slotting the editors from semi-respectable glossies just turn into a crapshoot after a while? Not quite. It wasn't a science, but there are rules of thumb, i.e. "who the reader is, whether the advertisers are in the class of retailers that distribute [the line], the circulation size," said Jim LaForce. "Then, there is a certain amount you could call nepotism -- are they friends of the house, etc.?"

The shot to the left is is the front row of Section A, sweeping from what should have been a clutch of Vogue editors (although I didn't recognize any, and the names attached to the chairs suggested that several may have opted not to come) toward Bridget Foley (7) (someone I thought was Amy Fine Collins, though Collins actually turned out to be near me in back in fifth-row socialiteland) and the massed ranks of Teen Vogue, with the Lucky editors behind them.

I was almost positive that (9), way up in the back, was Robert Burke, the former fashion director of Bergdorf Goodman, who has struck out on his own as a consultant. I assumed he must have been back there visiting someone, as Burke was neither third-tier press nor so unimportant now, despite his solo affiliation, as to have been banished to mid-section Siberia.

Sitting across from WWD was Hearst's contingent of editors, led by Harper's Bazaar editor Glenda Bailey (10) and her executive editor Sarah Bailey (11). Hearst Magazines president Cathie Black was assigned to sit with them as well but hadn't materialized by the time this shot was taken.

Although this photo was taken a mere five minutes before the show began, nearly the entire Elle contingent expected for the first row -- editor Roberta Myers, fashion director Nina Garcia, Francesca Mills, Ellyn Chestnut, and Kelly Killoren Bensimon -- had yet to arrive. Elle, like WWD, was supposed to pack four rows: publisher Carol Smith, an associate editor, and a fashion market editor in the second; an accessories and associate fashion news editor in the third, and a bookings editor and associate fashion editor in the fourth.

But who was in place to be spotted was Town & Country editor Pamela Fiori (12), who earned a front-row seat this time because of her extremely Blass-friendly readership of society types, and Times photographer Bill Cunningham (13), an institution unto himself best known for his weekly photo collages in Sunday Styles, but who is unassuming in person, to say the least. He hadn't RSVPed at all -- or that's what I discerned when the junior PR staffer out front asked him if he had credentials. (He's Bill Cunningham!) Moments later, he was seated in the front row.

Fiori's appearance at Blass speaks to the idea of how one's position at a given fashion show stems from an equation which takes into account the buying power and sensibilities of your readership, combined with the geographic sales footprint of the brand in question. Bill Blass, unlike many other shows, has no foreign editors in its front row because the brand isn't sold overseas. Instead, they foreign press was packed into the section nearest the models' entrance onto the runway, i.e. borderline Siberia. And despite what some editors have told the Times, they returned the favor by staying away from the show in drove, evidencedy by the huge pocket of empty seats.

The front-row seats for media people of the the foreign press' section belonged to In Style, where managing editor Charla Lawhon (14), fashion editor Hal Rubenstein (15) and their colleagues occupied a sliver of seats.

The Blass show itself? It seemingly went off without a hitch. Beginning only 30 minutes late ( a millisecond by Marc Jacobs standards) and calm despite the last-minute and heavily-guarded arrival of Janet Jackson. In the papers, the clothes were well-received by Mdms. Menkes and Foley the next day, and Vollbracht was stormed by well-wishing women of a certain age immediately after the show. Not that LaForce or Constable had much time to rest: They needed to put the finishing touches on the map for the Heatherette show scheduled for 9pm that evening. "One attracts ladies, the other attracts drag queens," said Constable, comparing Bill Blass to Heatherette. "It's a totally different crowd."

[Greg Lindsay is a freelance writer and regular contributor to mediabistro.com.]