New York ? Fashion Week, when designers present their visions for the next season amid air kisses and the thumping beat of club music, is, in and of itself, a sometimes-bizarre spectacle. Add Edina and Patsy from “Absolutely Fabulous” into the mix and you have a real show.

That’s what the BBC was counting on when it brought the TV series, which is seen in the United States on Comedy Central, to Manhattan last fall during the height of the runway season.

The cross-Atlantic trip makes sense for several reasons:

• Patsy, played by Joanna Lumley, is a true fashionista, and in “Absolutely Fabulous in New York,” the audience learns the former magazine editor has been hired by a chic London boutique as its creative director. She comes to New York, wearing her best Ivana Trump-lookalike outfit, with the intention of finding inspiration.
• Edina, played by Jennifer Saunders, needs a new city to show off her trendy-yet-ill-fitting wardrobe that includes a J.Lo-style warmup suit and too many pairs of thong underwear.
• These middle-aged women — who wear so much makeup that it takes 30 minutes to take off — blend in with the rest of the Fashion Week crowd, including editors, retailers and quasi-celebrities, like high-priced foundation.

And Edina and Patsy’s champagne-swilling, constantly-coifing antics are only slightly exaggerated from real life.

“When we first tackled the fashion industry in early shows, we thought the fashion industry would hate us, but, suddenly, people were saying ‘thank you.’ They said, ‘Thank you for noticing us,”‘ says executive producer Jon Plowman.

At times during the weeklong New York shoot, it was almost impossible to delineate fiction from reality.

Even in the sometimes-outrageous fashion world, Edina and Patsy from Absolutely

Parts of the episode, which makes its debut here on Saturday, were filmed during the Jared Gold fashion show, and Harper’s Bazaar magazine threw a hot-ticket party that boasted a live musical performance by Deborah Harry, who also turns up in an “Ab Fab” cameo role.

“I’m a fan of the show,” says Bazaar editor in chief Glenda Bailey. “And I think Patsy has a very eclectic taste and unique sense of style.”

Lumley, Patsy’s alter ego and a former model, also didn’t disappoint Bailey: Lumley showed up to the party wearing a white lace blouse and leather blazer.

Saunders, though, says in real life she doesn’t pay too much attention to fashion. She attends friend — and fellow Londoner — Betty Jackson’s runway shows but more for moral support than to do any preseason shopping, Saunders explains.

She admits, though, taking a fancy to some of Edina’s wacky shoes, including the cow-print clogs she wore in New York.

Saunders works with costume designer Rebecca Hale to come up with Edina’s grown-up-hippie-slash-designer-slave look.

Hale says she strives for a balance between fashion victim and fashion icon for each of the show’s characters. “They can be victims because they have to have the latest looks, but they’re icons because they are so over the top. They treat life as theater.”

Can viewers who shop at the mall and actually consider “a new season” to mean a change in weather instead of color palette relate to all the fashion jokes on “Ab Fab”?

“Fashion is a very visible joke,” says Saunders, who also writes the show. “It’s easy to put together the wrong outfit and get a laugh, but it’s also an inside joke, too, so everyone is happy.”