Blue Jeans

In Myrna Poirier's life, fashion turns up in unexpected places. Photos of beautiful clothes hang from her office walls. Pictures of organza dresses peek out of her cookbook. And Ms. Poirier, an architect, says building a house is akin to building a great shoe."Clothing design, when it's done well, is an art form," says Ms. Poirier, 53, who lives in Fells Point. "It's similar to seeing a beautiful sculpture or painting. It does something to all your senses."How would you describe your style?

SAN ANTONIO -- Clara Flores once thought she had the job of a lifetime, even, perhaps, the most solid job in America. She made blue jeans. Not just any blue jeans. Levi's. "It was the original," Flores said. "Wherever you went, it was the same Levi's blue jeans." The $4.2 billion company, founded 150 years ago by Levi Strauss, a Bavarian immigrant who settled in San Francisco to outfit the gold miners, has turned out more than 3.5 billion pairs of the sturdy denim jeans with their trademark rivets at the seams and little red pocket tab, becoming an American icon right up there with Coca-Cola, Hollywood, the Colt .45 and baseball.

If there were a dress code for visitors to the current exhibit in Howard Community College's Rouse Company Foundation Gallery, it would stipulate that people must wear blue jeans when going to see Julie van Hemert's "Peopled Jeans. " That's because the artist uses blue jean material for her wall-hanging fabric art. Van Hemert does not significantly alter or transform this material. Instead, she typically clusters a few pants legs together in order to suggest that several close friends are, er, hanging out together.

Across the country, decades-old jeans from older, classic American brands such as Levi's, Lee and Wrangler are worth holding on to, according to Dennis Little in his new softcover book "Vintage Denim," (Gibbs Smith, $21.95).Signs that read "Will buy Levi's" above shops are testimony to the growing interest in American vintage denim, Little writes.He devotes the first half to the history of denim jeans, a subject briefly explored in 1990 in "Denim: An American Legend" by Iain Finlayson (Fireside, $17.95)

SOME 550 FOLKS STREAMED INTO THE Maryland Food Bank's Halethorpe warehouse for the organization's third annual Blue Jean Ball fundraiser. Some of the evening's fun came from dressing for it. Any combination of black tie and blue jeans was welcome. "That made it an attraction for me, because I don't always look forward to dressing up. This kind of dressing up I'll do anytime," said Jim Perdue, CEO of Perdue Farms and the gala's honorary chair, sporting a tux jacket and jeans. "I know I'm the only person in here with creased jeans on," boasted Craig Sigismondi, Carey Sales and Service president / owner.

PRESIDENT CLINTON will not allow himself to be seen as soft on China's cheating on trade commitments during the election campaign. The trade war that continued building yesterday probably will be contained until November and resolved later. It has the virtue of being about genuine trade issues and not about other matters in dispute between two great countries.U.S. officials say that Chinese firms pirated U.S. music, films, books, software and patents to the annual tune of $2.3 billion in lost sales since China agreed in February 1995 to stop the practice.

Even if I didn't know the title of the exhibition -- "Jesus 2000" -- I would have known the minute I entered the small gallery: I was surrounded by images of Christ. One painting depicts Jesus standing against a royal blue sky amid shafts of sunlit clouds. His coat, made of colorful flags from many nations, billows behind him as he beckons with his right arm. In another image, Jesus, bare-chested and wearing blue jeans and baseball cap, is a carpenter. And from still another work, a collage comprising digital images of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a somber Jesus seems to gaze directly into my eyes.

LEIDEN, Netherlands - To fade a pair of blue jeans used to take years of wear and tear or a washing machine full of pumice stones. Now, an enzyme found near a pink flamingo's mud nest in Kenya can do the job in minutes. Scientist Brian Jones made the discovery next to one of the thousands of raised mounds dotting a salt lake near the Rift Valley. The six-hour drive from Nairobi to a camp among water buffalo and crocodiles is one of many he's made in the search for new products for his employer, Genencor International Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif.

Ever wonder if all that stuff you learned, and just as quickly forgot, in high school chemistry class might come in handy?Consider Gary Hale.With no more esoteric lore than students get out of such a class, the operations manager of the Baltimore Arena knows how to make ice on a grand scale, enough to fill a hockey rink.When asked how much water it takes to make an ice floor, Hale pauses, then says: "Lemme have a pencil." In less time than it would take to use a calculator, he works it out on paper.

Before "Dawson's Creek," before Old Navy polar fleece, before every retailer in America began mining the powerful pre-teen market, there was Delia's.It started as a catalog with a decidedly Gen Y attitude (clever phrases, cool clothes). It's exploded into a mega-bucks business that reaches more than 11 million girls. Internet properties and stores -- including a new one in Towson -- have extended its reach.Who's behind this can't-miss retail mix of retro toys, hip housewares and Soho-style clothes?