Waist

WHENEVER I come across a photo of myself from the 1970s, I get the urge to incinerate it.It was the worst decade for fashion in the history of mankind, but I did my utmost to wear clothes in style then. I owned a leisure suit, multicolored "fly" shirts and a pair or two of bell-bottom pants -- outfits crowned by an Afro hairstyle.Perhaps I shouldn't disparage the Afro. For one thing, it was a powerful statement of heritage. Second, it had a fringe benefit for an African-American teen-age boy: It attracted attention from pretty African-American teen-age girls who welcomed the chance to twist the locks into cornrows, before Allen Iverson was even born.

NEW YORK -- Corsets to create 17-inch waists, weighted brass coils to elongate the neck and shoes so tiny a woman would have to bind her feet for years to twist the toes down and inward to slip into the silken footwear. These items sound at once terrifying, perverse and more than a tad painful. Yet, puzzling as they are as clothing choices, they've been the necessary fashion statements at different times. Now the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute has assembled them for an exhibit to showcase the changing concepts of female beauty throughout history and the extremes to which we have gone to achieve them.

There's that V-word again. It comes up in conversation about cocktail dresses; you hear it again when the subject is shoes. And it's even there when talk turns to skiing.Value. It's the fashion buzzword of '90s. Even those who can afford to schuss down the mountains of Aspen are looking for more for their money this season. Skiwear designers have responded by offering more versatile garments this winter -- stylish clothes that can be worn equally well on the slopes or on the streets. The new designs also reflect a little less trendiness than in previous years as the direction turns to more conservative looks that will endure for more than a few seasons.

If avoidable catastrophe inevitably drove societies to correct their weaknesses, there would be precious little work for legislatures and regulators. The tragic truth is that terrible disasters become catalysts of major reform only when some more complex scene has been set and a latent reservoir of public outrage is ready to explode. That is the fascinating story of Triangle: The Fire that Changed America, by David Von Drehle, a reporter for The Washington Post (Atlantic Monthly, 340 pages, $25)

Q: I've been making an effort to improve the way I look. All the books I've read tell me to highlight my positive features and downplay my negatives.The problem I'm having is that my best and worst features are right next to each other. I'm short-waisted but have a totally flat stomach. I want to play up my flat tummy and at the same time draw attention away from my short waist.A: The answer is to wear one of the season's new suits. They come with a short jacket and leanly cut pants and skirts.

My television set almost met an untimely end thanks to Jenny Craig.The commercial for the ''Jenny Craig Weight Loss Program'' had come on yet again as I sat enraptured with a bacon cheeseburger and a frosty. There she was, hailing her program as the answer to everyone's weight problem. The implicit message, of course, is that if one loses enough weight, all life's pleasures will beat a path to one's door.I am a large-sized woman, so commercials such as these -- as well as exercise videos and fashion magazines -- fill me with both hope and dread.

Talk about impulse buying: The weather this past week may have had you wishing you could trade in your car for a cross between a jeep and a tank.And if a salesman for AM General Corp. had been chugging up your icy street in a brand new Hummer, there's no doubt about it: You would have been tempted to sign the dotted line on the spot.Hummer is the rugged -- its big knobby tires come up to your waist -- civilian version of the all-terrain Humvee that AM General produces for the military.It's not a thing of beauty.

The latest fashion innovation is one of the oldest -- and most despised. Corsets, girdles and other garments designed to nip waists, tuck tummies and tighten thighs are shaping up as one of the biggest influences on current fashion.Body shapers have been around for not just centuries, but eons. Historians say women in ancient Crete had iron bands soldered around their midsections to achieve the "ideal" 12-inch waist.Now garments designed to squeeze, push and plump women's malleable parts to new dimensions of "perfection" are top news again in magazines, in lingerie departments and on feminists' hit lists.

Seeking further insight into the dynamics of the Maryland judicial system, we ventured yesterday morning to the old Sears store on North Avenue.This might seem odd to persons unaware of the department store's conversion to a complex housing some of Baltimore's District Courts. It's a large, ugly, nearly windowless building -- I call it "stacked chest-freezer architecture" -- that looms like a gray monolith on the city's hazy eastern horizon. It is located in an interesting neighborhood. Nearby are the Great Blacks in Wax Museum, the William C. March funeral establishment and the Veterans Warehouse, an emporium of previously used clothing that I have heard referred to as "Saks North Avenue."

Maybe it's the spectacle of leaves ablaze in scarlet and bronze, the sharp smell of ripe apples or the sting of an autumn wind.L Or maybe it's just scheduled in most teachers' lesson plans.Whatever the reasons, this is the time of year kids tune into the changing seasons. Here are some books with seasonal themes but year-round appeal.* "The Story of May," by Mordicai Gerstein (HarperCollins, $16, 48 pages, ages 4-8) opens with spring, not fall. But it's the best of the lot, so it leads off.Mr.