Eddie Bauer

A Laurel mother's lawsuit alleging racial profiling at The Mall in Columbia is scheduled to go to trial next month, four years after she filed the suit. Howard County Circuit Judge James B. Dudley rejected this week efforts by mall attorneys to postpone the trial. It is scheduled for June 5. Prince George's County resident Sandra Allen is seeking $1.2 million in punitive damages as well as compensatory damages to be determined at trial. The suit says that Allen, her son and his friend, all of whom are African-American, ate at a mall food court Dec. 21, 1995.

It's a problem that has countless women grumbling in store dressing rooms across America and catalog retailers like Eddie Bauer, L.L. Bean, and Lands' End complaining bitterly about millions of dollars in merchandise returns.In the chaotic world of women's clothing sizes, the numbers that shoppers see on garment tags, from tiny 2 all the way to 20, have become all but meaningless.Women waste hours trying on clothes that droop or squeeze, and catalog vendors end up with costly returns from similarly frus- trated mail-order customers.

Fashion houses have renamed our colors, making plain old green a more stylish-sounding celadon, turning brown into cappuccino, changing white to stone.So that sweater you got from Aunt Betty for Christmas just isn't your color and you want to exchange it. OK, but first you've got to figure out what color this color that's not your color actually is.Green? Not a chance. If it's out of this year's Eddie Bauer catalog, it could be celadon. Or basil. Or alpine green, dark pine, cactus, mallard, juniper, dark spruce or thyme.

Clothing retailer Eddie Bauer has settled a racial discrimination lawsuit with three black teen-agers held by a VTC guard who thought they were shoplifting, a spokeswoman said.The company was appealing a jury decision siding with the teen-agers when the settlement was reached last week, Bauer said yesterday. Terms were not disclosed.A security guard at the company's Fort Washington warehouse store falsely accused Alonzo Jackson, Rasheed Plummer and Marco Cunningham of shoplifting and held them Oct. 25, 1995.

ONLY THE SECURITY guard involved really knows if racism motivated him to order a young black man suspected of shoplifting to take off his Eddie Bauer shirt. A Prince George's County jury was convinced the guard wrongly sent the teen-ager home without clothing he had actually purchased. The jury was convinced the Eddie Bauer company bore responsibility for the guard's actions. But the jurors were unsure what went through the guard's mind.Testimony indicated the security guard, off-duty Prince George's police officer Robert Sheehan, suspected Alonzo Jackson of shoplifting because the Eddie Bauer shirt he was wearing looked new. It was new. Mr. Jackson had purchased it the day before.

SPRINGDALE, Utah -- Amid massive canyon gorges, surrounded by formations of Navajo sandstone that jut more than 2,000 feet into the brilliant blue sky of far southwestern Utah, some big truths are unavoidable:Man is very small, his achievements modest and fleeting. Nature possesses great power -- both brute force and delicate beauty. The physical history of the world unfolds in ways that will forever escape our understanding. And one more: I am an Easterner.Back East we don't have red cliffs and checkerboard mesas like the ones at Zion National Park, or badlands and towering pillars like the ones at Bryce Canyon.

Lads who lunch?In the dark days before corporate enlightenment, one of the fixtures of any major convention was the fashion luncheon. That was for the wives, to keep them busy and entertained while their men pondered weighty subjects. Times change.Meeting Planners International, a group of professional convention organizers, is meeting in Baltimore this week. One of the highlights of the gathering will be a full-tilt runway show with buff models, commentary, dressing tips and a forum on fashion direction.

It may be the night before Christmas, but there are miles of malls to go before you sleep. You need inspiration, a talisman, a muse. Who can you turn to? Barbie, of course. America's Favorite Doll will lead the way in her latest guise: a Bloomingdale's Shopper. Bloomie's Barbie is a limited edition doll designed to portray the shopping mecca's "signature" customer. Thus her signature "Bloomie's" gray sweat shirt and leggings, hot pink satin baseball jacket and matching cap and white tennis shoes.

WASHINGTON -- The record $176 million settlement in the discrimination lawsuit against Texaco will no doubt be hailed as a triumph of justice over bigotry. But despite the clear vindication of Texaco's black employees, the settlement is a Pyrrhic victory in the history of American race relations.Within days or weeks, the Texaco incident will be largely forgotten. The company's stock price already has rebounded. The intolerance that gave rise to the lawsuit will vanish from the news. As with similar episodes, white America will view Texaco as merely an aberration in a society that most whites believe to be equitable and even solicitous to blacks.

Team Dead HeadThe slam-dunking skeleton of the '92 Olympics is alive and kicking. T-shirts, based on those originally worn by the Lithuanian Olympic Basketball Team and produced with funds donated by the Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia, have met with such success that old and new versions of the shirts are circulating.Greg Speirs, the artist who designed the original, wears the commemorative skull-man line, which he markets through Slow Leak Apparel at $30; (800) 550-6531.Not Fade Away has a model at $28; (800)