Next month marks the start of Fashion Week in New York, a sort of sensational sporting event that brings together the big guns of the New York fashion scene, including not just designers and magazine editors, but celebrities and fashionistas of all calibers. Though the official Olympus-sponsored event regularly show cases the works of 70+ designers (including the finalists for Bravo’s “Project Runway”) there are a few renegades are planning their own, independent shows, and are including a few theatrical stunts to pull in the attention. This year for example, the windows of Marc Jacobs’ Bleeker Street store will offer visitors the awkward experience of mixing sex and handbags. The Daily, an online news forum on the bizarre world of fashion reports:

The sextrologists will sport specially designed Marc Jacobs lab coats in their on-site ‘Love Clinic,’—giving shoppers a quick and dirty astrological reading with their hobo bags.

A little off beat yes but then again, this is a designer whose runway show last year caused almost as much head scratching (with a few references to the Adams Family and potato sacks), and as it did praise. Over at the Miss Sixty show (also operating away from the official fashion week tents), singer Kelis, of the “Milkshake”-song fame, will be entertaining the crowds for both the runway show and the after party. And don’t even get me started at the “swag bags,” – the popular free stuff handed out by the PR people all over these events, encluding paper additions of The Daily, which will be tracking the fashion and celebrity play-by-play all week.

Though all the extra trimmings add to the fun and excitement to one of the fashion world’s largest and and most outrageous events, lets see if the fashion on parade can alone speak for itself.