One way to gear up for fashion week madness is to tune in to a TV show about, well, fashion week madness. At least that's what the Sundance Channel had in mind at last night's preview of its new four-part series The Day Before, which takes a peek at hectic eleventh-hour countdowns to the big runway moment.

This Thursday's episode, as guests including Leighton Meester, Lorenzo Martone, and Rachel Zoe learned at the Norwood screening, will star Proenza Schouler's Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough up against endless last-minute snafus: Will that gossamer-thin chiffon hold together? Bra or no bra? When will the bags come in from Italy? Why do all the Russian models have feet two sizes too big?

The Proenza episode moved along at a nice clip and even had a little irreverent streak—nothing too dishy, though. The designers (unlike Valentino in Matt Tyrnauer's recent smash hit The Last Emperor) had final cut, and thus could tweak sections in which they were, as Hernandez explained, "dissing people a little too hard."

Directed by French veteran Loïc Prigent, the series also goes behind the scenes with Jean Paul Gaultier, Karl Lagerfeld's Fendi squad, and Sonia Rykiel, whose ambitious, star-studded 40th anniversary tribute show Prigent recorded last year with a half-dozen cameras. "It was fascinating, like having eyes everywhere," the designer's daughter, Nathalie Rykiel, said of watching the final product (the Rykiel installment debuts tonight). "Now, when I see it, I actually like the drama that Loïc made out of it. During, it's not enjoyable at all. I prefer not having eyes everywhere."

— Darrell Hartman