Lotus Notes has been stripping all CSS in my HTML emails as well. I have included external style, embedded style and inline style. Most email clients at least honor inline style typcially. Notes has other plans in mind for all of my CSS, namely, not using it at all. The email looks great in nearly every other email client.
My suggestion is to write solid, semantically correct code with as much HTML text as possible. That way, the client will hopefully be able to at least read your content. Most importantly, I would suggest including a clear "web only version" link at the top of the page. Most email marketing services (Constant Contact, Createsend, etc.) will offer you this option. This is a surefire way that the client will be able to see your layout as it was intended to be seen. Unfortunately, this isn't the slickest and most ideal solution.