Safe Ears Earrings Are A Hot Holiday Seller

Apparently, Safe Ears are one of the hottest-selling items this holiday season. Safe Ears are Gold Circle Coin condoms wrapped in gold foil that can be worn as earrings. They look like big gold coins and have clips on the back to fasten them. They could also be clipped to a jacket lapel.

``It's incredible, extraordinary, we're selling them by the tens of thousands,'' says Sam Watson, one of the principals in Watson and Associates, the marketing company that developed the earrings. ``They are extremely light and comfortable to wear and the timing is just right. People are talking about them all across the country.''

The earrings come packaged in a set of three that sells for $9.

They can be ordered by calling (toll-free) 1-800-847-4198.

A look at high fashion

A gift idea for the fashion watcher is a handsome coffee-table book by the staff of W, sister publication to the fashion industry's influential trade publication, Women's Wear Daily. It's called ``The Designing Life'' (Clarkson N. Potter Inc., $35), and gives insight into the rarefied world of high fashion.

The book includes some of the best articles that have appeared in W, along with profiles of Bill Blass, Emanuel Ungaro, Yves St. Laurent, Ralph Lauren, Norma Kamali, Giorgio Armani, Calvin Klein, Perry Ellis, Oscar de la Renta, Gianfranco Ferre, Karl Lagerfeld, Donna Karan, Claude Montana and Valentino.

The book shows the designers at work and at play.

De la Renta is pictured at his beautiful Connecticut country home. Blass is shown in his studio and in the country with his beloved golden retrievers. There are pictures taken of Klein at the fabulous ``Sweet 16'' birthday party he gave several years back for his daughter Marci at Studio 54. Lauren and his family are pictured at his private Jamaican retreat looking tanned and relaxed. And W takes a look back at the remarkable career of the late Perry Ellis, who died of AIDS in 1986.

And, of course, beautiful photographs of the designers' work back over the years are included.

AIDS benefit a success

WWD reports that the Seventh on Sale AIDS benefit was a huge success. It began Thursday night with a kickoff dinner and by noon on Sunday the rough tally of money raised totaled $3.25 million.

Almost all of America's top designers participated by donating merchandise to sales booths for the event. They also made personal appearances. A line of shoppers wound around the block of the 69th Regimental Armory in Manhattan, where the sale was held.

Women arrived in leotards prepared to change in the aisles.

``What are we selling to the stores for,'' one top designer remarked to another. ``This is the way to sell.''

Marilyn Kirkby's column appears Wednesday in the Style section of The Times.