Calvin Klein

NEW YORK -- When Ralph Lauren announced plans for an initial public offering on the morning he showed his fall collection here, the news highlighted the conflict between creativity and commerce that bedevils every artist. Now, the three best-known American designers -- Lauren, Donna Karan and Calvin Klein -- will be represented on the New York Stock Exchange.Even though Klein has yet to go public under his own name, with his logo on everything from underwear to pillowcases he's big business as well.

When others ask you to dress them, you know you've got style.So it goes for artist Nancy Valk, who has paid more than one emergency visit to a friend's closet.Being a painter gives her an edge in sizing up color and shape. But having a good figure also helps. With broad shoulders and slim hips -- and an exercise regimen that includes daily 4-mile walks near her Ruxton home -- Ms. Valk, 47, can pull off many styles.How has being an artist shaped your style?I think I've always had a strong sense of style, but working with color and shape and form increases it.How would you describe it?

The 1980s started with the hostage crisis that swept Jimmy Carter from the White House and made the Ayatollah Khomeini as notorious as John Dillinger. The decade ended with the collapse of communism, the invasion of Panama, the Tiananmen Square massacre and the death of the ayatollah, whose religious crusade had shaped the period so decisively.In between there were Lech Walesa, El Salvador, "Who shot J. R.?", Mount St. Helens, Col. Muammar el Kadafi, Ronald Reagan, Reverend Moon, George Bush, "Tootsie," Lebanon, Ethiopia, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, Bernhard Goetz, Michael Milken, Iran-contra, Jimmy Swaggart, Robert Bork, Madonna -- and Vincent Virga, who has created a memoir of the decade in a powerful photo essay, "The Eighties: Images of America."

Ever wonder why hemlines rise and fall, necklines shift from high to low, backs are exposed one season then covered the next? It is quite amazing when you think about it, that every designer seems to shift design lines at precisely the same time. It's almost as though they had a meeting and talked it over.If you ask a designer how they all manage to make a change simultaneously, he or she will just say the time seemed right.There really is no mystery involved. In the industry, it's called the shifting erogenous zone of fashion.

Macy's secured a suite - aptly named the Macy's Lounge - inside the Empire Hotel as a place for fashionistas to relax between the fashions shows held in Lincoln Center. Situated directly across the street, it was easy to pop in for a quick snack or a suitable place to wind down for a few moments. Upon entering the suite, visitors could take a seat on the lush couches in the center room or enter one of the rooms off to either side. On one side was a room that held pieces from Nicole Richie's capsule collection, which she designed for the retailer.

If Bright Bluford wants a pair of shoes, little stands in her way of getting them.Take her Calvin Klein leopard pumps. Never mind that one is a 7, the other a 7 1/2 and that the store wanted to return them to the designer. Ms. Bluford decided they would be hers. And when it comes to fashion, this 33-year-old actress from East Baltimore usually gets what she wants.Among friends and family, she is known as a "shopping machine," a woman who can recite from memory the dates of sales at department stores in Baltimore, Washington and New York.

COLOR-SATURATED DRAMA by Gianni Versace, satin pink flowers by Lacroix, spare black and white shapes by Calvin Klein, traditional silhouettes by Ralph Lauren. We're not talking frocks, my dears, we're talking dinnerware.Designers have discovered that a table setting makes a strong fashion statement that any hostess of kindred taste can achieve without dieting down to a size 6.Tabletop collections, as they're called in the crockery industry, are the latest creative outlet for high-profile designers, and new ones are entering the market with each season.

In one fashion ad, which appeared in Gentlemen's Quarterly, a lithe young model stands provocatively, his eyes closed, his arms raised so that his sweater rises just enough to show a hairy stomach; his jogging pants hang off his hips.If that sounds a bit racy, consider Tanline's thong bikini print ad, which ran in men's exercise magazines. The ad includes three men posed so that their muscles ripple; each wears a thong shown from a different, but equally sensual, angle.Or open the current issue of Details magazine and take a look at the pensive male model in the ad for the Cross Colours hip-hop collection.

A recent article in Newsweek said the new trend in the fashion industry is using real people to sell clothes, instead of the usual thin, gorgeous models who look like they'd kill you for a slice of pizza. In a moment, we'll get into why this will never work. But if this seems like a trend you've heard before, that's only because you have, lots of times. It seems like every few years, people say they're tired of skinny, pouty women and incredibly buff, handsome guys in fashion ads - and they want to see models who look like real people.

Brooke Shields has fleshed out since nothing got between her and her snug Calvin jeans. Calvin Klein is in splitsville from wife Kelly. Ralph Lauren is settling in as the gray eminence of American fashion. Gloria Vanderbilt is in financial pickles. Diane von Furstenberg is flogging her stuff to TV home-shoppers. Life goes on; fashion goes in cycles.In the '70s, Klein, Lauren, Vanderbilt and von Furstenberg were among the first designers to achieve global name recognition, and we learned to spell those names from the derrieres of straight-legged, five-pocket jeans.