Storer officials saw the boarding venture as not only an opportunity to raise money, but also to apprentice students in the service trades, showcase the fledgling school to potential white benefactors and the parents of future students, and cement the town's place on the nation's memorial landscape. By the early 1890s, the school envisioned its campus as the perfect fit for a variety of events and encouraged its students, faculty, and the surrounding black community to help promote its boarding business:

We ought to have a Chautauqua Assembly, or a Summer School of Art, or of tiffany rings for sale, or of Music, or all in one at this picturesque mountain village. When its variety of scenery, its stimulating breezes, its opportunities for boating, fishing, hunting, its freedom from mosquitoes and from malaria, and its attractive houses and moderate prices, come to be known and appreciated some of these things will come here.41

When he announced Harpers Ferry as the site of the first annual meeting of the Niagara Movement in the United States, W. E. B. Du Bois noted how the town offered a perfect combination of symbolic and practical appeal. "The meeting place is cool, attractive and teeming with historic interest."42 "Come to HARPER'S FERRY," one postcard read, "for Inspiration and vacation."43

By the late 1880s, summers at Camp Hill attracted middle and upper class, mostly young African American crowd. As was common among most families who could afford extended stays away from home, the dormitories consisted of mostly women and children during the weeks, with husbands and fathers arriving on the weekends. The Washington Bee's fictitious gossip columnists "Clara" and "Louise," who spent their summers on the campus, were quick to critique the class and gender through leisurely pursuits. In such accounts, refined behavior, elaborate dress, and incessant gossip were the order of the day. Games of croquet on the campus lawn or horseback riding at the nearby stables were interspersed with stately meals, dramatic readings, and musical tiffany earrings for sale. Sometimes ladies and their children ventured down the hill to the river to fish, bathe, or pick flowers along the Potomac's shore. "The girls are very fashionable indeed," "Clara" reported in August 1884. "The young ladies take great pleasure in dressing. There are some who change at every meal. They have three meals a day here, and one would suppose the guests were at Delmonico's, fashionable resort, New York."44

While urban blacks flocked to Camp Hill to hone their refined cultural and intellectual tastes, a crew of Storer students labored to maintain the summer facilities and tend to guests' every needs. In contrast to the backgrounds of summer boarders, most Storer students hailed not from the "select sets" pocketed along the east coast, but instead from the rural upper South. Many enrolled at Storer College in search of the teaching skills necessary to escape desperately poor conditions. Most struggled to cobble together the funds to pay their tuition, and the wages summer student workers earned were usually handed back to the school at the start of the fall semester. Many who did not work on Camp Hill instead flocked to white resorts along the coast in search of employment; indeed, summer work at resorts became, around the turn of the century, a common form of employment for aspiring young African Americans.45

Storer students' struggles to make ends meet provided a striking contrast to the relative financial comfort enjoyed by summer boarders. The school preached to its student body that continued enrollment at Storer and ultimate success in life necessitated avoidance of the very activities popular among the summer vacationing crowd. Though many enrolled at Storer with only enough money for one term, "[t]hey learned," the Record commented, "to avoid excursions, festivals, picnics, and many other places of amusement" and thus save enough tiffany necklaces on sale to stay in school.46

For those who could not afford an extended stay, weekend excursion trains offered working class blacks an opportunity to bask in the town's resplendent beauty and fashion their own forms of commemoration. As railroad lines extended across the region, and tickets became increasingly affordable to the working poor of Washington, Baltimore, and surrounding areas, African American crowds became more numerous and conspicuous and often as interested in simply having a good time at Island Park or along the shore as in paying homage to Brown. The school and the black community's ambivalence toward the steady stream of such excursion parties during the summer best captures the class tensions that bedeviled efforts to claim (and contain) the town's historical interpretation. To Storer teachers and administrators, the seemingly careless amusements enjoyed by excursion parties at Harpers Ferry embodied the antithesis of the values of hard work, frugality, and conservative display. More importantly, it seemingly threatened to wrest control over the meaning of Brown's actions and its lessons from the "best men" and "best women" of the race and instead lend credence to whites' most base prejudices. Calling cheap tiffany accessories a "growing evil," in particular among "those in straightened circumstances," Storer student William H. Gordon fumed that it was "an expenditure of money in a way from which [its participants] receive neither pleasure nor knowledge of their country in return." Not only did such groups of black pleasure seekers needlessly drain their pocketbooks on train tickets, drink, and ostentatious dress, Gordon charged, their behavior in such settings dealt a blow to the race as a whole. Gordon was likely alluding to several highly publicized, violent encounters between members of black excursion parties and local law enforcement. So averse to the unrespectable behavior and pretentious affectations reputedly rampant on such trips, school officials included "pleasure excursions" on its list of banned activities.

Prohibitions against pleasure excursions were merely one part of Storer's focus on cultivating proper time and resource expenditure habits. In stark contrast to the conspicuous displays of status characteristic of elite black vacationers, Storer students were told to "leave their jewelry and gaudy clothing at home."48 In its instructions to parents on necessary and unnecessary items for incoming students, school officials "warn[ed] parents against sending and students against bringing jewelry and expensive clothing." Instead, tiffany for sale were told to bring only "the number of [clothing] changes necessary for cleanliness, of inexpensive material."49 Wasteful expenditures were, school officials warned, part and parcel of a destructive mentality that prized idleness and appearances over productivity and frugality and led to ruin both for the individual and the race as a whole. In the summer of 1904, the Record's editorial page implored its readers to "save their pennies, avoid excursions and fancy clothing, and be anxious to work all the time and be unwilling to be found idle."50

Though African American residents envisioned Harpers Ferry as a black counterpart to Mount Vernon, they never lost sight of the reality of racial hostility that engulfed the region. Fierce resistance from local whites had greeted white missionaries' initial efforts at establishing Storer. Throughout the early 1870s, local whites sought to pressure state and federal officials into annulling the school's charter through concocting outrageous stories of riots and unruliness. African Americans' sizable and growing presence in Harpers Ferry as residents, students, and tourists only further inflamed local whites' anxieties. Newspaper coverage of blacks at Harpers Ferry and Island Park ranged from vivid accounts of black fugitives and their capture, to "reckless shooting[s]," to "drunken rows at colored picnics," to "indecent assaults" on white women.51

That the maturation of Harpers Ferry as a black vacation destination elicited white hostilities and reprisals should be no surprise. African Americans' efforts at social autonomy and mobility in the post-emancipation era were invariably interpreted as a threat to the racial status quo.52 The presence of black tourists paying homage to a pivotal figure in African American history or simply congregating among themselves in places of their own choosing posed, in white Southerners' minds, a grave threat to the region's uncertain and contested racial hierarchy. At Harpers Ferry, poor rural whites came in contact with an upwardly mobile class of African Americans freed from the chains of servitude and refashioning established rituals of commemoration to fit their own perspectives on past events. Indeed, as evidenced throughout the Jim Crow South, whites' cries of black barbarism and primitivism were often loudest when the threat of black mobility seemed most acute.

The visitor to Harper's Ferry is doubly paid, for he not only feels the thrilling impulses which come from a contemplation of the movement of the first martyr of a true and not a spurious American freedom, but the natural beauty of the place appeals strongly to the most refined and exalted part of his being.11

Though nature's aesthetic appeal in the Gilded Age has been primarily seen as a retreat from the encroaching arms of industrialization, such descriptions of Harpers Ferry speak to African Americans' broader effort to infuse natural surroundings with historical consciousness, and helps explain why promoters of reduced tiffany earrings travel might have seen a potentially fertile market in surrounding black communities.

In their descriptions of the area and its past, contemporary black writers sought to recapture a past that was, in the midst of the nation's retreat from the promises of emancipation and citizenship, in danger of receding from blacks' collective memory. Nature was evoked to articulate historical and cultural consciousness, to give meaning to a violent past and uncertain future, and to channel order from the chaos of urban life:

The spirit of freedom has always dwelt among the mountains, and when old John Brown looked upon the mountains which rise in majesty round about the place, the spirit of liberty stirred afresh within him, here he resolved to do and dare and die, if need be, that his fellow man might come forth from the chattel house of bondage.

J. Max Barber, founding member of the Niagara Movement and attendee at the reduced tiffany pendants Ferry conference, reflected on the area's perfect marriage of aesthetics and racial consciousness:

The scenery and the history in and around this little mountain village possess an interest that is unusual. I have heard men speak of the peculiar sensation, the thrill which comes to one as he stands in the shadow of some mighty structure or on a spot where some great deed was wrought that perceptibly advanced the world. Men have journeyed to the other side of the world to drink a draught of air that played around a Calvary, a Trafalgar or a Runnymeade, and they have felt well-paid for their trouble. I too have known what it meant to meditate at Valley Forge, Queenstown and Gettysburg. But I must confess that I had never yet felt as I felt at Harpers Ferry.13

Barber, like many other African American visitors, forged an emotional relationship with the town and surrounding area based in equal parts on collective memory, personal contemplation, and observance. In his 1885 commencement address to the graduates of Storer College, the black nationalist and Episcopal priest Alexander Crummell noted that the town was "full of the most thrilling memories in the history of our race."14 The town's peaceful serenity and stunning scenery encapsulated, in many post-Civil War blacks' minds, its status as an African American Heu de mémoire on the nation's postbellum landscape. In so doing, such writers drew upon the abolitionist literary motif of evoking landscape imagery in contemplating Brown's sale tiffany necklaces. As the literary scholar Kristen Proehl notes, in the years following Brown's raid both Frederick Douglass and Thomas Wentworth Higginson waxed at length on Brown's "knowledge of the mountain landscape," and his subsequent "transform[ation of] the natural world into a tool that could be used to dismantle the institution of slavery."16

In the decades following emancipation, John Brown's siege of a federal armory in pursuit of blacks' freedom became a dominant image in nascent civil rights iconography. Brown came to represent not simply an uncompromising demand for full equality and the courage to act on one's convictions, but moreover African Americans' hope for social relations governed irrespective of color. Indeed, for many African Americans of this era, the most famous and beloved paintings of Brown were not the ones that portrayed him as a fire-breathing, maniacal traitor, but rather as the man who, as he was led from the Charlestown, West Virginia, courthouse to his execution, stopped to kiss a black child on the cheek. As the historian Benjamin Quarles notes, Brown was more than another hero in the pantheon of black history: "his was a name to conjure with, almost a presence to be summoned."17 Likewise, Harpers Ferry the place became, in the writings of abolitionists and postemancipation black scholars, a spatial metaphor of man's fulfillment of God's will.18

Beginning in the 1880s, Soloman Brown, an employee of the Smithsonian Institution and shop for tiffany accessories of African American history, annually led excursion groups to the federal armory at Harpers Ferry on the anniversary of Brown's raid.19 It was here, such groups were reminded, where brave black souls and white Americans of conscience cast the first stone against a dreaded institution that had, for generations, robbed them and their ancestors of their freedom and their heritage. Popularly identified with many black Americans as the site where the nation took its first steps to reclaim all that had been vanquished under bondage, the fort also came to symbolize African Americans' cultural rebirth in freedom. Pieces of its exterior became treasured keepsakes collected by black visitors, representing a bookend counterpart to the slave's shackles in the material history of slavery and emancipation. Frederick Douglass, for instance, kept a brick from the fort on the mantle of his home, Cedar Hill, in Washington, D.C.20 And in an undated letter to Storer College's president, Nathan Brackett, the famed civil rights orator implored the school to mark "this sacred spot" with a monument to John Brown "so that it may tell ... coming generations of what benevolent self-sacrifice in the cause of Justice and Liberty our human nature is capable. We owe it to ourselves and to mankind," he added, "to rescue this spot on which this deed was done from doubt and oblivion."21

Despite Brown's quick ascendancy to mythic status, Harpers Ferry did not emerge as an excursion and vacation destination for African Americans simply because it was weighted with historical significance. Rather, African Americans' attraction to Harpers Ferry during the summer months stemmed from the town's commercial exploitation by a burgeoning tourism industry that traded in Americans' insatiable desire to fashion new identities (or reclaim old ones trampled underfoot by war and socioeconomic upheaval) through crafted visions of shop for tiffany bracelets past. By the late nineteenth century, pilgrimages to battlefields and national shrines had emerged as one of the chief destinations for the nation's growing numbers of excursionists and vacationers. Civil War battlefields such as Gettysburg capitalized on Americans' desire to commemorate the dead and reconcile sectional divisions. Families, veterans' groups, and excursion parties of all stripes boarded railroad cars and swarmed into this newly minted hallowed ground looking for the chance to collect relics from battlefields, reenact Pickett's charge, or simply drink and lounge with friends in the Pennsylvania countryside.22

The success of Gettysburg in fashioning itself as a travel destination that combined pleasure with collective commemoration no doubt influenced Harpers Ferrians' marketing strategies. Yet it was the downstream commemorative destination Mount Vernon with which Storer College contrasted its surroundings when appealing to black audiences. One advertisement for summer boarding at Harpers Ferry in one of Washington's African American newspapers read:

For the money ($4 dollars a week) good board is furnished. The quick easy access to Washington City renders it twice a blessing to those whose time and purse will not allow them to go far or to anymore fashionable places. This resort ought to be crowded from the opening to the close. As Mount Vernon is the Mecca of the whites so Harper's Ferry should be the Mecca of the colored American citizen.23

Copyright National Catholic Reporter Publishing Company Jan 22, 2010

PARIS AND HER REMARKABLE WOMEN: A GUIDE By Lorraine Uscio Published by the Little Bookroom, $19.95

ONE WILD LIFE: A JOURNEY TO DISCOVER PEOPLE WHO CHANGE OUR WORLD By Clare Mulvany Published by the Collins Press. $35.95

One of the great joys of traveling the world tiffany discovering the people in it. Twp new books put the traveler's focus on extraordinary individuals.

Lorraine Liscio's experience trying to find vestiges of the tiffany bangle of 12th-century scholar and abbess Héloïse provided the impetus for Paris and Her Remarkable Women. Liscio's difficulties, and ultimate small success, taught her that "often the traces of women said to have disappeared have not; one must only look harder and piece together the clues like a detective," she writes.

In 16 lively profiles, Liscio shines a light on the lives of tiffany ring women who made their mark in Paris' history. There are household names like groundbreaking fashion designer Coco Chanel, but also lesser knowns, such as Christine de Pizan, a bookmaker and writer who argued for the worth of women in the early 15th century. Each profile is accompanied by information about sites where a visitor to Paris can find connections to and traces of these women's lives.

The lives illuminated in One Wild Life are contemporary rather than historical. tiffany bracelet Clare Mulvany set off around the globe to find innovative people working to make the world a better place. They tell their stories in this book, interpersed with Mulvany's reflections on her journey - the sights she saw. both beautiful and grim, and the qualities of the social entrepreneurs who refuse to be daunted by the odds.

A standout is the moving story of India's Kailash Satyarthi, who tiffany cufflink when he was 5 years old and wondered about the boy on the street shining shoes, while he. Kailash. got to go to school. From those beginnings he has led a lifelong crusade to rescue children from bonded labor, often in the face of death threats.

Not all the interviewees' stories are as dramatic as this, and some verge on a dry recitation of the subject's resumé. But when the focus is on the meaning and purpose of the work he or she has chosen, it makes for inspiring reading. The book serves as a snapshot of the social entrepreneur movement, with interviewees offering advice on how to make an impact. And Mulvany even offers her own advice, should you wish to follow in her footsteps and meet a world of visionaries.

Copyright National Catholic Reporter Publishing Company Jan 22, 2010

PARIS AND HER REMARKABLE WOMEN: A GUIDE By Lorraine Uscio Published by the Little Bookroom, $19.95

ONE WILD LIFE: A JOURNEY TO DISCOVER PEOPLE WHO CHANGE OUR WORLD By Clare Mulvany Published by the Collins Press. $35.95

One of the great joys of traveling the world tiffany discovering the people in it. Twp new books put the traveler's focus on extraordinary individuals.

Lorraine Liscio's experience trying to find vestiges of the tiffany bangle of 12th-century scholar and abbess Héloïse provided the impetus for Paris and Her Remarkable Women. Liscio's difficulties, and ultimate small success, taught her that "often the traces of women said to have disappeared have not; one must only look harder and piece together the clues like a detective," she writes.

In 16 lively profiles, Liscio shines a light on the lives of tiffany ring women who made their mark in Paris' history. There are household names like groundbreaking fashion designer Coco Chanel, but also lesser knowns, such as Christine de Pizan, a bookmaker and writer who argued for the worth of women in the early 15th century. Each profile is accompanied by information about sites where a visitor to Paris can find connections to and traces of these women's lives.

The lives illuminated in One Wild Life are contemporary rather than historical. tiffany bracelet Clare Mulvany set off around the globe to find innovative people working to make the world a better place. They tell their stories in this book, interpersed with Mulvany's reflections on her journey - the sights she saw. both beautiful and grim, and the qualities of the social entrepreneurs who refuse to be daunted by the odds.

A standout is the moving story of India's Kailash Satyarthi, who tiffany cufflink when he was 5 years old and wondered about the boy on the street shining shoes, while he. Kailash. got to go to school. From those beginnings he has led a lifelong crusade to rescue children from bonded labor, often in the face of death threats.

Not all the interviewees' stories are as dramatic as this, and some verge on a dry recitation of the subject's resumé. But when the focus is on the meaning and purpose of the work he or she has chosen, it makes for inspiring reading. The book serves as a snapshot of the social entrepreneur movement, with interviewees offering advice on how to make an impact. And Mulvany even offers her own advice, should you wish to follow in her footsteps and meet a world of visionaries.

For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land; The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape, give a good smell.

The Bible: Song of Solomon (ch. II, v. 11-12)

The season of new buds and blossoms also signals fashion changes in the reduced tiffany earrings classroom. Shorts, short skirts, tees, muscle tops, underwear exposed by low-rise pants, hospital scrubs, and flip-flops appear. With the advent of warm weather, women's clothing style can be tight and/or revealing. Jewelry and accessories become more visible. Multiple body-piercing jewelry and tattoos are prevalent among the youth.

Body decorations like piercing and tattoos go back to ancient times, and are very common today. It is estimated that 20 million Americans have tattoos (Gillespie, S. [1996]. Needlemania: Tattoo craze. Texas Monthly, 6, 78). The National Education Association reports that 15-20 percent of school-age students are tattooed or pierced, or both. The American Academy of Dermatology reports that 89 percent of men and 48 percent of women who wear tattoos have conspicuous designs on their hands, necks, arms, legs, toes, and feet (Sayre, C. [2007]. Tattoo bans. Time Magazine. November 5, p. 56).

The college age statistics are startling. It is estimated that up to "51 percent of reduced tiffany pendants-age individuals in the United States have multiple ear piercing or other forms of body piercing or tattoos" (Kloppenburg, G, & Maessen, J. G. [2007]. Streptococcus endocarditis after tongue piercing. Journal of Heart Disorders, 16(3), 378). While the earlobe is the most common body piercing site, growing numbers of youth now pierce the ear cartilage, eyebrow, nose, tongue, lip, chin cleft, navel, and other body parts (Meltzer, D. [2005]. American Family Physician website, www.aafp. org/afp/2005115/2029.html).

Tattooing also has gained popularity and respectability. More females, middle-class, and educated individuals participate in tattooing as compared to previous generations, when prisoners, thugs, soldiers, freaks, and gangs were clumped together as the dominant users of tattooing. Tattoos have infiltrated the sale tiffany necklaces and don't seem as exotic as they once did. Workers often consider tattoos and piercing as artistic and hip in the office place.

Teacher education faculty report that they speak regularly with candidates about their clothing, visible piercing, and body art. Some education faculties have been known to place restrictions on candidates' dress, jewelry, and accessories during their field-based experiences. College educators often direct their candidates to attend field experiences in the public school looking a bit more "professional" and "appropriately" dressed. For some candidates, this request can leave gaps of interpretation, especially when it comes to tattoos and piercing.

Faculty try to gauge the new styles and norms with good humor and common sense. Many faculty prefer not to regulate teacher candidates' norms for dress and accessories. Teacher candidates attend classes dressed for comfort with the fashion freedoms they desire. However, each spring, teacher candidates are reminded that the norms for dress and accessories for the two settings, college classroom and conservative field-based classroom, can differ. Visible tattoos and body piercing will not be widely accepted in the schools.

It is then that a candidate will remark that college faculty and public school teachers don't "dress up" on a daily basis. Faculty members wear jeans, t-shirts, and even shorts. They will report that college faculty and mentor teachers have visible tattoos and piercing. Presenting standards of dress and appearance for teacher shop for tiffany accessories can be increasingly difficult because public school practice may not be genuine. Regulating the visibility of tattoos and body piercing, and monitoring the casual clothing for teacher candidates, sometimes makes me feel dishonest.

Generally, restrictions are legitimate and necessary for the teacher candidate to properly function within district schools while representing the values of a teacher education program. Candidates are advised that many parents want to see their children's teachers as role models. They are reminded of the old adage that first impressions count. The realities of first impressions made by administrators, colleagues, and parents during their brief time in a school setting can be critical to their success. Candidates quickly become aware that schools are hectic places and school personnel may not have many opportunities to get to know them well, so a certain image may give the teachers and parents confidence. In this age of accountability, the candidates are aware that school-based staffare eager to assess them.

For some, tattoos and body piercing are issues of free expression. Professors and educators have no desire to trample on candidates' First Amendment rights. However, teacher education programs do appear to need clear guidelines for candidates doing field work in the public schools. Although tattoos and piercing generally are accepted in society, they still are not welcomed easily in the local schools.

"Most U.S. workers believe body art and piercing damage your job prospects. Inking your arm or piercing an eyebrow could hurt your chances of getting a job. Survey data indicates that employers are less likely to hire someone with visible tattoos or body piercing. Tattoos and piercing are considered career killers in law, shop for tiffany bracelets services, health, and politics. A survey of employers indicated that 58 percent would be less likely to hire someone with visible tattoos or body piercing" (Global HR Round-up. News. "Personnel Today 107" [Sept. 11, 2007]: NA.General One File). Thus, in teacher education, it might be wise to recommend that candidates conceal body art so it won't have an effect on recruitment.

Recently, there has been a rise in tattoo and body piercing bans in the workplace. Police departments have been leading the way with this prohibition, but it is not an isolated ban. The United States Marine Corps has set a high standard on the image of professionalism and has outlawed "inking." Other professions may follow. Regardless of how commonplace tattoos and piercing might seem today, they evoke many biased first impressions in the public schools.

Is it ever okay for teacher candidates to have visible tattoos and piercing, and to wear provocative clothing? In the end, it is about finding balance and using common sense. Perhaps Harry Wong, author of the widely circulated book The First Days of School, says it best: "Always dress better than your students. If you don't care how you look, how can they care about you?"

Perhaps you might like to weigh in on this topic. Contact the ACEI Intermediate/Middle School Committee with your thoughts

I have a navy wool that has a little hook and eye and comes right to the hip bone. It's $2,880-No. 24 in the look-book," the no-nonsense salesperson is telling a customer over the phone at Barneys" Lanvin trunk sale, an event held for the benefit of women hell-bent on ordering next winter's clothes six for sale tiffany rings in advance. Outside it maybe October 28, 1929, consumer confidence is at an all-time low, housing prices are reeling, but inside Barneys, the kind of people who spend $3,145 on a dress and $7,370 on a furry, spangled stole are still milling around. Or at least some of them are.

Hal Rubenstein, the fashion director of In Style magazine, is here, advising Dr. Pat Wexler to "try on the black one with the sheer sleeves." Looks as if somebody chose the right field: Wexler, a renowned dermatologist with an extensive product line of her own, is counting on rampant bad skin to see her through the current financial crisis.

But am I really any better than these people? I linger longingly over a on sale tiffany necklaces printed tote, marked $1,025, which even the salesperson is viewing dubiously. Is this fabulous? I ask him. Or does it look like a fashion-show giveaway? He chuckles, says nothing, and turns back to the other shoppers, who may or may not be suckers for a coat made out of dead weasels that I fingered briefly before catching sight of its $21,390 price tag and dropping it like a hot poker.

Mildly depressed, I decide to go next-door to the Calvin Klein store, whose creepy gray-stone interior is as silent and forbidding as a mausoleum. I am searching for a particular $3,500 men's sweater, which The New York Time's T magazine featured under the headline "Basic Cable, High Fashion, No Frills." (Personally, for $3,500, I don't mind a few frills.) My plan is to grill an unsuspecting salesperson about the price of this item, but the virtual absence of even a single other shopper, the deadly hush, the sense that the staff on sale tiffany rings I'm a slovenly potential thief serve to intimidate even fearless me. Plus, though I see racks of tuxedos and $400 sports shirts, I can't even find this $3,500 pullover. (Could it be sold out?)

What I need now is a friend. So I amble down Fifth Avenue to Saks, where the salesman in the handbag department recognizes me (not because I'm so famous, but because I'm in Saks all the time to check the sales and use the ladies' room.)

"Talk to me! I'm so bored-we're not selling anything," he begs, surrounded by perky patent Valentine purses sporting four-figure price tags. "Did you ever meet Anna Wintour? What's she like?"

Alas, I have no Anna dish to brighten his day. But I realize I'm three blocks away from my friends in the 47th Street diamond district, and I'm wondering: What with the price of gold soaring, are people tempted to melt their heirlooms? Five minutes later, I'm at Ronald Kawitzky's antique-jewelry booth when another celebrity name comes up. "This was Nan Kempner's charm bracelet;" he says, holding up a clunky gold affair for the delectation of another dealer. According to Kawitzky, "It's a gesunta look." It is indeed. In fact, it looks like it weighs almost as much as the late socialite Kempner, who was famous for saying: "I loathe fat people."

So, Ronnie, are people melting their jewelry? "Sometimes I see things not worthy of survival and I tell them, "You should melt it,"' he says. "People bring stuff in to defray the cost of their new purchases-they say, "Melt this toward a diamond bracelet.' It's a real alternative for worthless stuff." As an example, he hands me a ring that he says is worth more melted down than it could ever sell for. I see what he means: The ring is in the shape of a Mayan mask with garnet eyes, and, sure, it's hideous, but if Kate Moss wore it, would it not be instantly fabulous? Kawitzky gives it another look and concedes that, in fact, "Somebody might buy it."

How do you know what the price of gold is anyway? Is it on the Internet somewhere? "I reduced tiffany Eddie," he says, waving to Eddie, who is standing behind a showcase across the aisle. "Hey, Eddie, you know what platinum is today? $2,000 plus? I remember when it was $300-lower than gold."

Well, this must be good news for some people, especially since you can't melt a Lan vin fur stole If you're really worried about the wolf at the door, your $7,000 is perhaps better invested in a Victorian tiara. Or is it? Maybe just stuffing the money in a mattress, or in an old doll like in The Night of the Hunter, is what you should do now.

I phone up Howard Davidowitz, the chairman of Davidowitz & Associates, a retail consulting and investment-banking firm in Manhattan, to get a rough idea of how many new clothes and pieces of jewelry are in my future, and boy, does he rain on my parade.

"The consumer is really under water," he tells me. "For the past 10 years, consumers used their homes as piggy banks. We've just about wiped that out Consumers have nowhere to go for money now. Bush said the one thing he would never do is raise taxes, but inflation has raised taxes on every consumer. The average person who drives, who eats, has 5 percent inflation-a huge tax increase. We have stagflation and an effective tax increase that affects everybody."

Davidowitz is just warming up. "More than 150 million Americans whose family income is $44,000 or less-half of America-their living standard will never be the same, never recover," he says. "We can't pay for Medicare, for Social Security! We can't pay for anything!"

Um, does that mean most people won't be getting new outfits this spring? "The apparel business is a disaster," he tells me. "If you look at the biggest apparel sellers, you see the Limited-terrible, Gap-terrible, Abercrombie & Fitch down, Bon Ton, Dillard's, Kohl's, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom's down, Ann Taylor down, Chico's is wrecked-it doesn't look too good."

Kohl's? Chico's? What about Saks and Barneys? "The expensive stuff can't even be discussed! Fine leather from Italy? Forget it! There's been a 70 percent price increase." So is anyone buying anything? "People from Europe. That's what's held up the New York real-estate market-because Europeans are coming reduced tiffany bracelets now." How long can this national nightmare last? "I have a sign in my office that says, 'Nothing is forever,' but for half of the country, it will seem like forever. People won't recover. When I look at what we have to do to crawl out of this hole, it's bad as far as the eye can see."

Now his voice is rising in anger. "Those nitwits on TV, they talk as if things will go back to normal. Bush is a complete and total moron. When we went to war, his message was: Go shopping. Everything Bush says is insane-he's a C student, a cheerleader, a drunk! 'Keep shopping' is characteristic of an idiot-but I understand his point If you have a bubble economy, you've got to keep it going, you've got to keep borrowing."

At this point, Davidowitz is practically screaming. "No one runs faster than a scared banker! They sent 10 credit cards to people in homeless shelters, and of course they didn't pay! Now the geniuses at the banks are surprised! A guy with no income, no job-they sold him a house! They gave him $400,000! And now the banks want to be bailed out!"

Um, sure, but what about clothes? "Who's the biggest apparel seller in the country? Wal-Mart. And what are they cutting? Apparel. People are buying what they have to buy- drug chains are doing great. Those checks the government is throwing out of helicopters are going to go to Family Dollar for foodthey're not going to help Ann Taylor. People are eating at home more often, they're driving less, starting to conserve, and what's the thing they don't need? Most people-they don't absolutely need another pair of jeans. They have 14 sweaters, they don't need 15."

Well, I do, I mutter, barely above a whisper. "Yeah, my wife too," Davidowitz says. "She'll plotz."

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Sep. 30--About 10 girls clad in this season's expected trends -- bulky tiffany in yellows, teals and bright purples paired with high boots -- are slated to mingle with a crowd next week to raise money for academic scholarships in honor of a woman slain in Tinley Park last year.

The Jeffrey LaMorte Salon & Day Spa and 1 Happy Girl Boutique in Lemont are teaming up to host a fashion event in Lemont to raise money for post-high school scholarships for Homewood- Flossmoor High School and Lincoln-Way Community School District 210 students in honor of Carrie Hudek-Chiuso, a Homewood-Flossmoor High social worker who was one of five women slain on Feb. 2, 2008, at the Lane Bryant women's clothing store in Tinley Park.

Angie Avorio, director of education of academy at the Jeffrey LaMorte salons, suggested Hudek-Chiuso's scholarship fund when the salon was looking for a charity to donate the fashion show's proceeds to.

"When I first started out in my career, some of my first customers were tiffany bangle and her family, specifically her mom," Avorio said. "When I heard [about the shootings] it was extremely devastating to me."

Cards and flowers simply wouldn't do, she said. So Avorio hosted a fundraiser just after Hudek-Chiuso's death, and then suggested the salon, which has locations in Lemont, Frankfort and Orland Park, donate too.

The event, called the Fall/Winter Vision of '09 Trend Show, is on Oct. 10 at The Place, 206 Main St., Lemont. Salon stylists will be on a stage to show people how to color and style while models already with that look -- and wearing the expected fall trends -- will talk up the audience. The event also includes a silent auction and a raffle.

Hudek-Chiuso, 33, of Frankfort, was one of five women killed when a man posing as a delivery worker walked into the Lane Bryant store around 10 a.m. on a Saturday, then herded six women into a back room. About 40 minutes later, five women, including Hudek-Chiuso, were tiffany ring, shot execution-style. A sixth woman suffered a graze wound to the neck and later helped police sketch the face of the killer. The murders remain unsolved.

Also killed were Sarah Szafranski, 22, of Oak Forest; Rhoda McFarland, 42, the Lane Bryant store manager from Joliet; Connie Woolfolk, 37, of Flossmoor; and Jennifer Bishop, 34, of South Bend, Ind.

Police have traveled from Texas to England chasing down tips, which number about 5,450, Tinley Park police Cmdr. Pat McCain said. In April the South Suburban Major Crimes Task Force, which is investigating the murders, said the store no longer was a crime scene and returned it to its owner, Minnesota-based Ryan Companies.

The women's clothing store is part of a 500,000-square-foot tiffany bracelet mall called Brookside Marketplace at 191st Street and Harlem Avenue. Charming Shoppes Inc., the parent company of Lane Bryant, was leasing the store from Ryan Cos. Tinley Park Mayor Ed Zabrocki said the store is vacant.

After Hudek-Chiuso's death, her family created Carrie-Fest, which is to be an annual event to raise money for scholarships to help disadvantaged youth pay for their post-high school education, such as college or trade school. So far Carrie-Fest has raised more than $200,000, and three students have received scholarships, said Mike Hudek, Hudek-Chiuso's brother, who helps organize the fundraiser. Besides ticket sales, several businesses donate goods for auctions.

Last year, singer Peter Cetera, formerly of the band Chicago, who went to tiffany cufflink Catholic Prep High Schoolon the South Side with Hudek-Chiuso's father, played an acoustic set at Carrie-Fest. Hudek said he's prepping for next year's celebration and hopes to give three or four scholarships next year.

"This past year was tough ... [but] the local businesses here still found a way to give to us," Hudek said. "It was really, really amazing, given the economic times we're in. I think [the Lane Bryant murders] struck a chord with a lot of people."

W hat is a fashion muse? An amazing meteor that holds the eye and seduces for a second before vanishing? Or something more?

Thanks to the cult of celebrity, we have become confused reduced tiffany earrings names we know, such as Victoria Beckham, Kate Moss and Yasmin Le Bon, and the real muses of the fashion pantheon. Behind every great creator there is a muse in the shadows, but they have never been given the attention they deserve. Indeed, aside from rare instances such as the recent exhibition at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Model as Muse , these voiceless creatures have often completely escaped identification.

However, the muse may soon be given due reduced tiffany pendants, thanks in part to the publication of two new biographies. The Marchesa Casati: Portraits of a Muse is about the Italian heiress who, for three decades in the early 20th century, captivated the artists and literati of Europe. Rare Bird of Fashion recounts the story of Iris Apfel, the octogenarian American who has been muse to designers including Ralph Rucci, Geoffrey Beene and Isaac Mizrahi. The book accompanies an exhibition at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. These singular women understood, in the Marchesa's words, that: "There is too much sameness. The world seems to have only a desire for more of this sameness. To be different is to be alone. I do not like what is average. So I am alone."

In this definition, the fashion muse is anti-fashion; she helps to create a tide that can rip sale tiffany necklaces everything we thought we wanted to wear and make us think again. Creation needs a conduit, an arch assimilator in whom the new idea can been seen to take root and grow. Inspiration, to a designer, comes unbidden and unexpected. Karl Lagerfeld, with whom I have worked at Chanel for more than a decade, is blessed with visionary dreams that wake him and propel him like a sleepwalker to his desk. In the morning he finds drawings of new shapes and directions. John Galliano, with whom I have also collaborated, sees his next collection in its entirety in a eureka flash.

I have always avoided analysing what exactly I do at Chanel, feeling shop for tiffany accessories my role is rather like being a high-wire artist without a safety net. The minute you look down at your feet you are likely to fall. In truth, my role is fairly straightforward - to be engaged in the articulation of Lagerfeld's design concept. This involves internalising his ideas and addressing them without losing myself in them. How would that rounder shoulder feel? Would a higher heel work with a shorter, curving skirt? How do the frilled white shirts balance up against the sugary pastels of the knitwear?

At Chanel, Lagerfeld's team is led by Virginie Viard, who shop for tiffany bracelets his drawings and works with him on colour and texture. I am there as an eye. My reactions are to proportion and to cut, to the unity of the whole.

The artist Alberto Martini describes brilliantly his collaboration with the Marchesa Casati. In the book he says to her: "One day you want a Medusa portrait. Today, a lion. Every other day are you something different? Yesterday is dead; tomorrow is a mystery. You'll jump out of bed tomorrow morning and in the mirror you'll see some new revelations."

Amanda Harlech is collaborator at Chanel

From New York to Paris to Tokyo, this art professional and globe-trotter maintains a look that's clever, chic--and fuss-free.
When she's home, which is roughly half the year, Louise Neri can often be seen speeding around downtown Manhattan on her bicycle, a lovely dress by Saint Laurent or Marni billowing around her, a helmet invariably on her head, Newton sneakers on her feet, heels tucked into her bag, and, as often as not, a couple of totes of fresh produce balanced on her handlebars. (Neri is an accomplished cook who frequently entertains friends and colleagues in her twenty-second-floor Greenwich Village apartment.)
Beyond the two-wheel commute to the Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea, where she is a director, Neri has traveled far and continues to do so. Born in New Zealand to English and Indian parents and raised in Australia, she left Melbourne in her mid-20s to take up a curatorial fellowship in buy tiffany accessories, and has lived between Europe and New York ever since. Not to mention that the rabid internationalism of the contemporary-art world requires heavy rotation on airplanes. In the past two months alone, Neri has been in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Paris, Tokyo, Gwangiu (Korea), Venice, and Moscow. Next month she will attend the Miami Art Basel fair before flying home to see family, taking in another visit to Japan en route.
Considering all this, it is not surprising that Neri, who always looks fresh and beautifully dressed in a style that combines Australian ease with the refined aesthetic of European designers, is a genius at packing. "I pack like I cook," she says. "I plan it all in my head. And then it takes me half an hour."
Practicality is one of her mantras, though she never sacrifices style. "I like buy tiffany necklaces that are easy to wear," she says. "I pride myself on being able to get dressed in five minutes." The resort collections offer an excellent cruising ground for wearable, glamorous pieces flexible enough to adapt to her needs. "I sometimes travel for a weekend," she says. "But the last few times I've been traveling for three weeks or more, with very different requirements and seasonal differences--sometimes even going from summer to winter."
"I'm drawn to structure, line, cut, beautiful fabrics, and innovative twists"
We start our resort review with one of Neri's current passions: Yves Saint Laurent. "He always makes great dresses," she says of Stefano Pilati's designs. "They just work really beautifully. They don't need any accessorizing. They're very respectful. They're elegant, but they're not stuffy. And what's also very nice about them is that people like them but they don't know what they are--one thing I really resist is being worn by clothes." She picks out the bustier suiting dresses and pantsuits with shirts underneath, a dress in blue shirting--"I think shirtdresses are the best invention in the world. People should make more of them, and experiment with them"--and another in beige with diagonal gatherings. "It's quite sculptural and very easy--you could wear it during the cheap tiffany and dress it up with heels at night." All perfect for the art trail.
Her job--among other projects, she is currently putting together shows with Yayoi Kusama, the octogenarian Japanese legend who shot to fame in the sixties for her installations with polka dots, and the young Japanese architect Junya Ishigami, known for designing the new Yohji Yamamoto boutique in New York--calls for good presentation but no major formality. In her 20-plus years in the art world, Neri has seen a big upsurge in how people dress, but the rules are loose. "There's a certain decorum that's required," she says, "but a lot of it can be very casual." For galas, which happen daily in certain seasons, "you can sort of wear anything you want to--a long dress or something really fun." (Recent favorites include a floor-length black silk Margiela shirtdress and Dries van Noten's explosively colored, mismatched prints.)
Other activities demand different looks. "When you're working with an artist in their studio," she explains, "it's not terribly appropriate to be dressed up." (She opts for pants and sweaters, such as those from Balenciaga's capsule collection.) But mostly she wears dresses. "I wear them much more than I choose tiffany to," she remarks, "and heels. It's not a requirement, but I like them. I'm a grown-up, not a kid." Marni is one of her staples. "They always make really good dresses for day that are generally very unfussy and easy to move in. And they last. I have dresses that I've worn for ten years, and people always follow me around and ask where I got them."
A brief stop at Nina Ricci yields an intricate, A-line denim skirt that combines interest with informality, which she pairs with the label's fine silk knits. Tall and slender, Neri nonetheless deems her frame too athletic for most of Olivier Theyskens's ethereal silhouettes. At Lanvin, another line she buys mainly for day and appreciates for its simplicity--"Lanvin dresses are the most comfortable things in the world"--she raves about the resort jewelry, the jacket-like cardigans, and the relaxed evening dresses, singling out in particular another of her beloved chemises, floor-length and midnight blue. "I like to wear long dresses sometimes in place of a mid-calf dress," she says. "They just give that extra bit of glamour."
Neri has always loved clothes, which she considers with the same scrutiny and appreciation she applies to an artwork, a furniture design or a fabulous dish. "I'm drawn to structure, line, cut, beautiful fabrics, and innovative twists," she says. "I detest bling and fuss. I've always enjoyed looking at what's coming up and, according to my needs at the time, bought the clothes I liked." She remembers her excitement in her early 20s, when she ran a small arts complex, at the opening of Mr. Figgins, a store in a Victorian building that she describes as "a very brave attempt to bring the best of everything offered in Paris right into the center of Melbourne." Here she bought her first Azzedine Alaia pieces, including a suede hunting jacket with a knit waist she still wears. "At the time, it was the most expensive thing I'd ever bought. I gazed at it for weeks. Then I figured out I could buy it on layaway. There were only about ten made, and I remember Grace Jones had one." Later, in Paris, she came to know the designer. "I wore it once, and Azzedine was so shocked to see it.
"I'm not much of an impulse buyer," she continues. "I take note of all the seasonal looks in the previews, but I never preorder. It isn't until I actually try something on that I make my decisions, and always carefully. These days clothes are so expensive that I feel you really have to think before you buy."
"These days clothes are so expensive that you really have to think before you buy"
At Balenciaga, Neri lights up at the extensive resort collection, which could happily fill her wardrobe for a full year. "It's really wearable, clever, appealing," she says, finding numerous separates and a handful of dresses, including a vintage-looking black viscose piece with ruffles, and a long fuchsia silk wrap dress. She loves the strappy heels and geometric knits, but most of all, she is drawn to a black draped evening top patterned with multicolored square paillettes. "It's fantastic," she exclaims. "It looks like a cityscape at night. I choose tiffany accessories wear it to a dinner or a museum event or a party."
After her first trip to the Venice Biennale many years ago, where she found herself feeling "inept and unprofessional" toting heavy bags around the city's cobbled streets, Neri made a point of streamlining her baggage and traveling light. Until now, that is . . . helped by the example of a fashion PR friend with offices in several countries, she discovered German Rimowa luggage, and it changed her life. "Don't ask me why, but I used to have an aversion to wheelie bags. These are incredibly light. You can push them with one finger." The result? An enormous suitcase she checks in, taking Saint Laurent's patent leather Downtown bag for the cabin as she hunkers down in her Qantas pajamas under a hooded Marni minidress worn as a cover-up on those endless flights.
The Rimowa will clearly be welcoming some great new additions for the winter season.

The full-time doctor, mother, and wife works a strategic look built for multitasking while staying in tune with her frilly, feminine side.
Iffie Okoronkwo Aitkenhead is just about as exuberant as the tumbling frills she's cooing over in Carolina Herrera's sunny Seventh Avenue showroom. "Oh, I could just walk out with this," she trills, running her hands over a navy jacket edged in dotted chiffon before rushing along the rack toward a gossamer blouse she deems "perfect" and on to a lithe sheath covered in pretty roses. "Fabulous!"
A busy Manhattan physiatrist (rehabilitation specialist) and a tiffany accessories of three, Aitkenhead is bursting with energy, and she expects her wardrobe--and the rest of the world--to keep up. She shops for versatility, clothes she can wear whether she's making her hospital rounds, giving a tour at her daughters' Upper East Side school, vacationing in St. Barth's, or scouting Miami Basel for cutting-edge art. Yet, while it all has to look good under a white lab coat, she doesn't go for boring basics. Instead, she celebrates her bold feminine streak, just like Herrera.
"That's what I tell women who are senators and politicians and do men's jobs," the designer says as she and Aitkenhead look over the resort collection. "You cannot lose your femininity. Wear a little something frilly. You get more when you dress like a woman."
"Exactly," Aitkenhead says, beaming. "Beauty is power." At 43, she cuts a striking figure in the macho medical world, where she's found that her polished look--prettily embellished blouses paired with tailored pants and Manolo Blahnik heels in which she can comfortably "run for a bus"--helps her capture the attention of sleep-deprived residents and earn the respect of her peers.
But while she may swoon over the feminine flair and delicate lace of Herrera's resort collection, Oscar de la Renta's sassy tropicalia, or Francisco Costa's clever pleats at Calvin Klein, she doesn't lose her head. During a leisurely showroom visit and two fashion-filled runway shows, she basks in the tiffany key of it all. Then, without a hint of hesitation, she narrows her selection for the season down to one magic look: de la Renta's filmy black-and-white striped shell and a pair of razor-sharp white silk pants. "When he came out with those pants, it was like E=MC2," she says. Clearly, Aitkenhead is the type of highly strategic shopper for whom rapt appreciation does not always mean a ringing cash register.
"Smart fashion is timeless fashion," she explains one afternoon, swinging open the door to her neat, well-lit closet in the airy apartment she shares with her husband, Ben, an investment banker, and their daughters, Kate (eleven), Sophie (nine), and Lauren (five). She shows off her most savvy investments: sleek Hermes belts, a flyaway Roberto Cavalli evening dress in pearl-gray silk, and a new Chanel jacket trimmed with silver braid. Her highest compliment to the pieces that have given her the most mileage: "It doesn't owe me a penny."
Aitkenhead learned the value of beautifully made clothes early on. She tiffany note to New York from Nigeria at age two as a refugee from the Biafran war. Catholic priests helped her family escape, hiding them in the tall grass by a river until they were out of harm's way. While they arrived in the United States with nothing but the clothes on their backs, "my mother is the original smart shopper," Aitkenhead says, remembering her years growing up on East Seventieth Street. "Even when we had no money--and I mean no money--our underwear came from Saks. She taught me that if you're going to spend, pay the extra $10 and make it worthwhile." In those days, her mother bought her suits at Jaeger, preferring to own one beautiful ensemble rather than a wardrobe of cheaper things. "She still has those suits," Aitkenhead says proudly. As an undergraduate at Yale, Aitkenhead was a tomboy and a self-described geek (she was the cochair of the Science and Engineering Association) who had yet to discover her passion for clothes. "I was a very late, late, late bloomer," she says, laughing. "I went to my twentieth college reunion recently, and people did double takes."
"If you're going to spend, pay the extra $10 and make it worthwhile"
She sprang for her first pair of Gucci loafers while in medical school at Cornell and quickly developed a taste she couldn't afford. "I'd have one great piece and work everything around that." Now, after all her years of hard work, Aitkenhead is in a position to spend more freely, but she still likes to mix her treasured best with lower-priced staples--shirts from Anne Fontaine or something fun from Target. "How many people don't own the shirt from Target that they just love?" she asks, raising a brow. When she lays out for a Charm bracelet purchase, however, she buys with her daughters in mind, hoping that they will one day appreciate her well-chosen clothes as much as she does. "Look at this," she says, pulling a vibrant, floor-length vintage Pucci skirt from the racks in her closet. "I've worn it a thousand times. You can't kill it."
Of course, shopping with that kind of commitment in mind takes confidence. One glance into Aitkenhead's closet confirms her bravado and her love of color and of making an entrance. There's the prized Missoni knit dress in pink and plum, the Prada lambskin coat her daughters are already vying for, as well as her long, looping strand of pearls and an enviable collection of handbags, including an oversize python Kotur bag, her favorite. She takes pleasure in it all, pulling down a floppy mink-and-sable hat by J. Mendel from the top shelf, then peeking out coyly from under its wide brim. She swings a ruffled khaki raincoat from the rack. "I will go to my grave in this," she says dramatically.
But while Aitkenhead's fashionable joie de vivre is all her own, her style is also something of an homage to her first-grade teacher, Ann Adler, a tall redhead with a loud laugh and a penchant for bright lipstick, whom Aitkenhead cites as a personal style icon, alongside Sophia Loren and Catherine Deneuve. Adler, who passed away, wore demure pleated skirts and bold accessories, like the chunky gold-link bracelet Aitkenhead had copied in her honor. Beyond imparting a love of fashion, however, she made Aitkenhead--the only African-American student at her small, private girls' school--feel special. "When tap dancing was in, she bought me tap-dance shoes. When everyone had Wallabees, I had Wallabees, and when everyone went on the school trip, I went," Aitkenhead says. "She told me I was fabulous, and I believed her."
"Know thyself" is her motto, and Aitkenhead knows very clearly who she is. It shows when she's shopping. She's honest with herself, selecting clothes that best suit her body type--she's a lean six feet--her lifestyle, and her budget. She can't wear Herrera's cap-sleeved dresses, because they would overemphasize her broad shoulders, and she nixes de la Renta's boxy pleats, which would accentuate her hips. "My body is dramatic enough without exaggerating everything," she says. She praises Costa's clothes for being Bead bracelet without going overboard. "I love that," she whispers during his show as a model passes by wearing an ivory python coat over a slinky taupe dress in silk charmeuse. "When clothes move with you, it makes you feel right. You move with them, too."
She nixes de la Renta's boxy pleats, which would accentuate her hips. "My body is dramatic enough," she says
Some of Aitkenhead's best buys she describes in terms of the time elapsed between love at first sight and signed sales slip. There's the seven-minute Versace coat, in white with white leather trim, and the twelve-minute Dolce & Gabbana white suit. Naturally, like everyone else, she makes the occasional blunder. Unlike most, however, Aitkenhead leaves her dud purchase--a gorgeous Derek Lam dress in blue silk--hanging front and center in her closet as a reminder. "I always wanted something from Derek Lam because his clothes are so beautiful," she says, shaking her head, "but I have never left the house in this dress." (It's the wrong cut for her body.)
"I bought it for the same reason I buy art, because I love cutting-edge," she says. "He was new at the time, and that newness appeals to my slightly competitive nature. I wanted it first." On the other hand, de la Renta's sharp resort look is an obvious addition to her wardrobe. As Aitkenhead puts it, "I just know those pants won't owe me a penny."