Earrings

They are best friends. They share the same beliefs and feelings, the same sense of style, the same color preferences. And between them, there's 50 year's worth of fashion sense and sensibility.But 25-year-old identical twins Rebecca and Jennifer Cormeny have their own closets and basically their own wardrobes. That doesn't mean that Jennifer won't take a trip down the hallway to peer into her sister's closet. Often, she's stymied by the sheer number of shoes she encounters. For it is Rebecca who tends to accumulate the most footwear, earrings and fashion sundries.

Baltimore County police have released a sketch by a forensic artist of a teen-ager whose remains were found last year in woods off Falls Road north of Mount Carmel Road.The remains of the female -- who police believe was black and between ages 17 and 19 when she died six years ago -- was found by a tree-trimming crew March 5, 1996.She was wearing a leather or vinyl zip-up jacket, a light-colored pinstriped blouse with pearl-colored buttons, size 7 pants with ankle zippers, MIA-brand high-top tennis shoes and gold hoop pierced earrings with a small gold ball at the bottom of the loop.

WILLIAMSBURG, Va. - Susan Green calls the Williamsburg Inn a "unique jewel." But it was her own gems - a pair of quarter-size earrings - that stood out as the vice president of Colonial Williamsburg's hotel division paid tribute to the five-star hotel on its 60th anniversary recently.If Green swept floors or mowed the grass, she could lose her job for wearing earrings bigger than a dime.Big jewelry, long beards and false eyelashes are among the casualties of the Colonial Williamsburg's latest effort to polish the image of its hotels.

INDIANAPOLIS -- How big a fan of North Carolina was Miles Simon?Big enough that when he got his rejection letter from Dean Smith four years ago, it immediately became a prized possession."

Not just a brown bagOnce the marker of the perfect '50s female, cocktail bags have replaced the bulky shoulder bags and sleek backpacks of last season. They don't hold as much, and they demand at least one hand's attention -- but their worth is in their elegance. They add a retro look to suits and grace to evening wear. And unlike the basic black or brown of last year's bags, they come in plaids (like the Kate Spade design shown here), leopard prints and iridescent shades.Two accessories that some women can't get enough of have now inspired books -- two weighty, photo-filled, borderline-obsessive tomes, in fact.

When he's at the salon, hairdresser Greg Malone, 32, wears jeans, T-shirts and sweaters. At home, "I have access to all this weirdness," he says. Malone, who works at Matthew and Ingrid Hair Design in the Belvedere Hotel, is just as likely to dress up his friends in over-the-top earrings, wigs and makeup as he is to transform himself. But tonight is Halloween and even Malone's best friends may not recognize him.How did you acquire your makeup skills?When my friend Jennings got sick with AIDS, he was wasting away and looking so thin.

As every husband knows, nothing produces the same head-pounding, gut-churning stress as buying a birthday present for your wife.When I was young (and therefore, even more stupid than today), I would buy my wife birthday presents based on such criteria as: what made her happy, what kinds of things did she like, blah, blah, blah.(I know, I know ... what was I thinking?)Now the main criterion I use is: Can this item be returned?Because no matter what I buy her, she's going to return it.Over the years, she's returned about 10 sweaters I've bought her. She's returned earrings, blazers, boots, perfume, watches and a fire-engine red negligee that she claimed looked like something off a Miss Valvoline calendar.

In an article yesterday, the name of a skateboarding orthopedic surgeon was misspelled. He is Dr. Drew Pagliaro.The Sun regrets the errors.Three orthopedic surgeons in a dark Saab 900S cruised into a blue-collar Baltimore County neighborhood early one Saturday morning, quickly unpacked their gear, ducked into the green overgrowth and went to work.They came not to an operating theater, but to a theater of sorts for those who perform on wheels. For these surgeons are also skateboarders, and their destination was a graffiti-covered cluster of concrete that is the Baltimore area's underground skateboard oasis: the Lansdowne skate park.

I DON'T KNOW WHEN it became a family tradition, but my trips to Ocean City with one or both of my children seem to have become as embedded into our yearly schedule as Thanksgiving at my mother's or Seders with my in-laws.Partly to cut into my guilt at not being around the kids enough and partly to give my wife a break, the trip has developed into a Dad-only production. Mom stays behind, goes to work, eats quiet dinners alone and rents movies to her heart's delight. By Memorial Day, she'll invariably ask, feigning lack of interest, "You're taking the kids to O.C. again, right?"

I grew up with a mother whose motto regarding her fake jewelry was "more is better." Maybe it's a rebellion against her, but I have very different tastes. The minimalism trend is for me, and I buy simply shaped clothes in neutral colors. But I realize I nTC do need some jewelry -- real jewelry. How do I go about building a jewelry wardrobe?I can understand your reaction against your mother's jewelry overload and think you are wise to start building a fine jewelry collection. For guidance I asked John Loring, the design director at Tiffany's, for suggestions.