By Wayne Sterling

In the days before New York's Fashion Week, the city streets that stretch from 7th to 8th Avenue between 40th and 34th streets, are the scene of an almost unreal contrast of images. Cutting through the chaos of bike messengers and minimum wage workers dragging huge racks of plastic wrapped garments, are a tribe of unusually tall, starkly thin, achingly beautiful women.

They run from showroom to showroom, from DKNY to Anna Sui to Richard Tyler, with frantic expressions creasing their delicate faces.Beneath the dazzle of photo-shopped covers and high glamour ad campaigns, this harsh, environment is the ground reality of the whole endeavor called fashion.

The clothes that these men drag back and forth must sell and sell in the millions or the industry dies. And these delicate coltish creatures running down New York's Eighth Avenue are the ones who must make these clothes sell.

The girls are on what the industry dubs "go-sees" and this act of going-to-see-the client represents the bulk of work hours logged by a new model.

Summoned by the wide range of designers that comprise NY's garment industry, they are presenting themselves and their modeling books for show casting.

They are hoping to be one of the 12 to 24 girls chosen to embody the designer's aesthetic as it snakes itself back and forth on the runways of Bryant Park.