Lipstick, potato chips, box lunches, duct tape, clothing racks, paper cups, hairspray, mascara, big round mirrors facing every which way like satellite dishes, trays of fake finger nails, an arsenal of makeup brushes, Tully's coffee, Marlboro Lights, Frontier Menthols and lots and lots and lots of smoke.

The 2004 spring/summer Tokyo Collections. Backstage at the show staged in Tokyo's Hibiya Park by fashion label a primary, across from the superposh Imperial Hotel.

Foreign models. Twelve of the tallest, leggiest young women you've ever seen, sprawled in chairs while teams of stylists frantically work their hair and faces. A makeup artist pauses with a brush at the ready while her subject, all cheekbones and curlers, hauls on a cigarette.

The clock says 2:22 p.m. That's 3 hours, 38 minutes until show time, when a primary will unveil its upcoming line to guests gathered outside on the lawn.

Well, not exactly 3 hours, 38 minutes, because nothing ever starts on time during the Tokyo Collections. Or, for that matter, during any fashion event, be it in New York, Paris, London or Milan.

Backstage, though, there are still so many things to worry about. Will the press -- the right press, the people from the big glossies -- make it to the catwalk on time? And how on earth are the 400 audience members going to get past the reception desk in the 15 minutes allotted for seating? Will there be enough front-row chairs left over for fashion royalty? (Fashion royalty always seem to show up at the last minute. Sometimes you just have to let them stand.) Will the sound system work?

You can feel the nervous excitement. And hear it, too. Somebody says, "I'm panicking."

Whoever said it, though, would not have been fashion designer Akiko Ogawa, the 30-year-old founder of a primary whose serene demeanor -- as she takes a moment's break at a table near the battery of stylists -- seems at odds with her fast rise through the ranks of Japan's competitive fashion world.

Success has given her the relative leisure to be calm. Only two years ago, at her Tokyo Collections debut, she had to do everything from reviewing samples to pressing fabric to adjusting seams -- all with the help of just two people. She didn't sleep at all the night before the show.

Four well-received shows later, though, and she's been able to bring together a crew of about 100, including two top names in hair and makeup design and a battalion of devoted interns from fashion-design schools across Tokyo.

Confident that she is in good hands, she's been able to take things in her stride this time around. "I didn't pull an all-nighter last night," explains Ogawa, a strikingly pretty woman dressed in a white T-shirt and a pair of black pants -- both (naturally) of her own design. "And I managed to take a nice bath."

The room has fallen into a lull as the models wait for their hair to set and the sound guys fiddle with their dials. The models -- who are from Brazil, the United States, Russia and Israel, among other far-flung places -- chatter among themselves in various languages.

The star model, though, keeps to herself. Jamie Bochert, a nonchalant 23-year-old from New Jersey, was waitressing for $5 an hour before an agency convinced her last year to try modeling in New York. "I at first declined because I didn't want to lose my restaurant job," she explains. "But I got my shifts covered for two weeks and I went out there and never went back."

Celebrity came as if by accident. "Before I started modeling, I was a total fashion idiot. Like, I had no idea who anybody was," confesses Bochert, who is loosely wrapped in an oversize blouse that refuses to stay put.

Now, flying from fashion capital to fashion capital, she is approaching supermodel status. The roster of magazines whose pages her image has graced includes W, i-D and Vogue Italia -- said by some to be the world's best.

Models with credentials like that earn big money at the shows, though exactly how much is hard to say. For one, model fees are negotiated privately between designers and casting companies, so that even insiders can only guess what others are paying or being paid at any time. And a model can fall out of fashion faster than the outfits she wears, meaning that grabbing the spotlight today is no guarantee of big bucks tomorrow.

But to give an idea, those in the know reckon that popular foreign models in Japan earn as much as 800,000 yen for strutting their stuff in one 15-minute catwalk show. That's below the pay scale for top names in New York, but above anything a Japanese model can hope to earn.

Jamie won't comment on how much she makes, choosing instead to describe her success with a modest, "I work a lot." Fame, she says, has left her largely unfazed. "I'm just going with the flow, bro."

The flow, in the form of an intern, whisks Jamie away -- whoosh -- because it's time for . . .

"Re-HEARRRS-al, giiirls!"

The room goes frenetic again as the models get ready to practice their procession down the catwalk. House music pounds out of a boom box buried under a pile of garbage and a singer wails, "Everyone is smi-i-i-i-ling!" The floor twitches with the beat.

Models are suddenly running around everywhere, throwing on blouses, slipping into high heels, then -- oblivious to the presence of several men in the room -- tossing everything off in favor of some other combination. There are fits of giggling. It's a lot like a nursery-school changing room.

Casting supervisor Mariko Kawamura, a petite woman with an XL-size voice, tries to establish order -- one woman at a time.

"Veronica!" shouts Kawamura, in search of a model who's gone missing.

"Jamie?" hollers a man in earphones standing by the door.

"These aren't my shoes," points out one model with a tattoo at the base of her spine.

"Is Veronica OK? Can she walk?" inquires Kawamura. Then, "Joy!"

"Ekaterina's next!"

"No pain?" a hair stylist asks a model whose head he's been poking.

"No pain."

"Ekater-i-i-i-na!"

"I don't want to wear socks!"

"OK."

"I don't need socks!"

"OK."

"MOVE! MOVE! MOVE!" Kawamura again.

"I wanna buy that dress. I need that dress. I'm obsessed with that dress."

And so on, until at last there's a brief respite again.

"They work hard here," says Jana Broughton, another American model. "But it's nice to work every day. It kind of makes you feel successful."

"It makes you feel a person with the money," adds Anna Fox, a model from the Ukraine who bears a passing resemblance to Kate Moss.

"Every job, you're like, ka-ching!" says Broughton, mimicking a cash register.

"Ching! Ching! Ching!" says Fox.

Soon everybody's attention focuses on the show, which will start in minutes.

"You go out and you think, 'Oh my God, maybe a heel's going to get stuck someplace and you're going to fall' or something like that. But you get used to those things," explains Liene Lase, from Latvia.

"Once I was in a show and one girl, she had a really big mask and it was really bright lights and when she was running out she wasn't seeing where she was finishing and she fell off the stage," recalled Russian model Ekaterina Boki. "She fell into the crowd. The photographers were very happy."

Enough talk. It's finally show time.

Anna is switching into yet another outfit and Liene is assuring a stylist that her hair won't obscure her vision. Jamie has donned a 1940s-style coat of jacquard silk with an understated champagne-gold floral motif reminiscent of a Japanese folding panel. The models take the stage to a dirgelike Radiohead ballad.

There's been a slight mixup: Some models break from the line order after somebody has trouble getting into her shoes in time. But the audience, a sea of faces crowded around the catwalk on the dark Hibiya Park lawn, has no way of knowing.

A spotlight follows the women as they stalk down the 25-meter stage, stopping abruptly at the end to stare down the wall of camera lenses before performing an about-face and stride back. With each step, pastel blue and green fabrics play around the women's legs; a model's gossamerlike scarf flutters in a gentle -- and very timely -- breeze.

Superstar Jamie, the final model to come out, is bathed in a fairytale cascade of camera flash at the end of the catwalk and, as she makes the walk backstage, the spotlight cuts her profile against the Tokyo night sky. The ballad comes to an end at the very instant she steps off the stage. The show was as close to perfect as any ever gets.

Behind the scenes, thank-yous, hugs and kisses are exchanged. Bottles of Moet & Chandon pop open -- along with several packs of Oreo cookies. A model is wondering aloud: "Where's the after-party?" Another declares, "I need Starbucks."

For many of the women returning from the stage, this is just another show in just another city. But for designer Akiko Ogawa, the moment is pure magic. Another triumph.

"All the work our staff has done, it came together for the 15 minutes of the show. What a feeling of fruition," she says. "Words can't express it."