Karen Elson performs at the PAPER/Nine West Party Celebrating Karen Elson's Vintage America Collection, New York, NY, September 2011. Photo courtesy of Paper Magazine. Photo: Rebecca Smeyne

Each week, Lizzy Goodman guides you through the dirty streets of rock and roll.

My goals for fashion week were two fold: no blisters and no hangovers that last more than a day.  The problem, as I soon discovered, is that fashion is unlike music: It’s still a luxury industry, which means they still have money, which means all the bars at all the parties are open bars. And they’re not stocked with some acai-flavored vodka but with prosecco and Macallan single-malt whiskey. The women (and some of the men) wear tall shoes, so while they’re gallivanting around New York City there are no cabs anywhere, so you walk quite a bit in heels forming blisters you only feel later, because at the time you were well-lubricated by free top-shelf booze.

I started on a rainy weeknight at the new club Beauty and Essex on the Lower East Side for the party launching Karen Elson‘s (model, musician and ex-Mrs. Jack White) new collection for Nine West. Inside flocks of girls and boys in fall finery glided around with flutes of champagne in a beautiful — if ostentatiously decked out — series of rooms that were like the interior of a bird cage, all metallic painted brambles and delicate chandeliers. Some kind of city-wide memo told stylish girls in New York that you must wear your hair in a loose ballerina bun atop your head; before Elson took the stage, the crowd beneath her looked like a collection of tiny dancers (Elton John reference accidental). “Like my new shoes,” Elson quipped after taking the stage in a sheer long sleeved dress, eyelids shellacked with gold. People hear model-turned-rock-wife-turned-singer and they prepare to be bombarded with self-indulgent pop, but Elson’s debut album, last year’s The Ghost Who Walks, is excellent — a kind of Loretta Lynn meets Kate Bush hybrid.

I had such a good time that I decided my goals were stupid and a few nights later ended up in Brooklyn, in heels, at a Vice party, watching a bunch of male strippers reveal latent homophobia in Brooklyn’s elite hipsters. “I’m cool with the girls but dudes running around in their underwear? I’m not cool with that,” exclaimed one patron. Kudos to Vice for equal opportunity sleazy nudity! Vice’s creative director for their online television network, Spike Jonze, was in the house, as were  Das Racist, and Yeah Yeah Yeah Nick Zinner DJ’d before event headliner Rick Ross played a bonkers set, but that wasn’t until later. First, everyone hopped from one former teller window to another frontloading on unusually decent rum. There were sliders too, but I was too distracted by multiple runs at the photo booth to think about food. By the time Ricky Rozay was on stage, it was one AM and my feet were numb. After catching some of the highlights (“Hustlin’,” “John”), I slipped out with two friends before the place imploded, and headed to Tribeca for nachos and, as long as I was there, more shots! Somewhere before dawn I found myself at a basement jazz bar downtown sipping Hemingway Daiquiris and discussing if the writer really drank them. I spent the next two days in Uggs on the couch watching the entire first season of Justified and re-hydrating. It was totally worth it.