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Interesting today is the contemporary swing back to more ladylike fashions. Can fashion make the leap from tube tops and tight capris in a single season as designers suggest for this fall and winter?

If some of the creations in Mendes' Dressed in Black are a clue, anything is possible.

Living life in full

The name Michele Weston is familiar to many as the fashion style director of Mode, the young magazine that Glashutte Automatic Tourbillion GSH-32 it possible for women of size to come out of the fashion closet.

Now Weston, with the assistance of Michael Sheldon, has published Learning Curves: Living Your Life in Full & With Style (Crown, $24). The book is a prescriptive guide for full-figured women on feeling good about themselves, inside and out.

She moves women through eight life-changing steps with a series of motivating questions and exercises, plus action steps for breaking out of their fashion ruts.

Surprisingly, the title Glashutte Automatic Tourbillon GSH-20 Curves is not so much about discovering the beauty of her own curvaciousness, but the name for Weston's interactive steps for self-discovery and flowering.

Along the way, she cites not only her own experiences but also those of other women of size - Camryn Manheim, Delta Burke, Emme and more.

Don't expect pretty, glossy photographs in this book; it is rather about dealing with the inner woman who seeks to gain confidence and discover her own style. From food fits to flirting, from how to carry your handbag to how to fit a bra, Weston covers the bases.

Ashford.com Inc., Blue Nile Inc. Glashutte Automatic Tourbillon GSH-21 a handful of other companies made a splash last fall by selling jewelry, fashions and other expensive goods only on the Web, spending millions to lure customers away from stores. Can they last until the next holiday season?

Building an online luxury business is likely to be much harder for dot-com start-ups than for the nation's most prominent high-end retailers, such as Neiman Marcus Group and Tiffany & Co. Those Glashutte Automatic Tourbillon GSH-22 retailers look at the Internet as just another -- instead of the only -- avenue for selling goods, similar to their catalog businesses. Over the past year, they've embraced electronic commerce with Web sites that are considerably more attractive than those selling books and computers.

Right now, the sale of luxury goods online poses little threat to traditional stores. In jewelry, for instance, Web sales during the 1999 holiday season amounted to about $30 million; the annual U.S. retail market for jewelry is $43 billion. For many people, shopping for fine fashions and jewelry is as much a social and entertainment experience as a business Glashutte Automatic Tourbillon GSH-23 . And already a consolidation of Web-only luxury-goods retailers has started: Ashford.com bought cosmetics seller Jasmine.com Corp. in January, and Mondera.com Inc., another Web jeweler, bought rival Jewelry.