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ON A PERSONAL BIAS  by Bernice Peck

THE POOR RICH: Maybe you are left unmoved by the recent record prices fetched in classy auction houses like Sotheby's and Christie's. Not me. I worry about the poor little rich kids who bought that $360,000 Tiffany glass lamp, spiderweb pattern. It would take exactly one boozy party-guest's elbow to fracture it to splinters. And how about those diamond earring that went for a simple $6.6 million? Gad, what an invite to the happy mugger - and if they're in pierced ears - well, Ouch.

MY FRIEND JOE is a skinny six-feet-two monument to elegant, snobby simplicity. Take his Burberry raincoat. He bought it nearly 12 years ago, when he was 22, wears it over tweeds, jeans, dinner jacket, expects it to continue till he's 60 (when it'll be even more nonchalant, see?).

Right now Joe is liking his son-of-Burberry. That's the new toiletries collection, Burberry's For Men. The fragrance is so - well - like Joe, all easy male charm. Relaxed. Just warm enough with wood and spice and very clean with traditional British lavender, camomile and thyme. Quality stuff. Fairly pricey, the Cologne starts at $10.50, with laving and shaving gear to match. Joe thinks well of it all.

NANCY-WATCHING: Most of us girls, whether Dem. or Rep. or neither, have followed Nancy Reagan's every move in the royal procession to the democratic throne. Fascinated. She got a lot of flak along the way, didn't she though?

Still, she is not the first First Lady to be shafted for her passion for finery and grandeur (but that many-thousand Galanos Inaugural gown was well really). However, Mary Todd Lincoln's personal extravagance was a scandal too in Abe's day. And she didn't even look good.

Which Nancy undoubtedly does. Bet you've seen no single shot where she wasn't faultlessly pretty, ditto dressed-and-coiffed. True, her rapt, worshipful gaze at Ronnie seemed a bit icky. But it proved she could hold a pose - never blinked once.

And sure I giggled when one newspaper interviewer quoted N's gorgeous flub-she talked about the "enormity" of her husband's victory. The dear lady couldn't have meant "heinous/ atrocious/ outrageous" which is the way my dictionary sees it.

What matters to me, though, isn't so much Nancy's beauty or grooming or grammar. What I need to hope for is that she married the right guy to adore. If her hero can only fix our rotten inflation, unemployment, energy shortages and relations with scrappy nations, I won't worry what she wears while he does it. And maybe next time around I'll vote for him-dotingly.

KNOW WHO was really the first designer to plant his initials on things and then sell them to us? Nope, not Yves. It was Louis Vuitton, way back in 1896 Paree. Modestly, though, he made his monogram seem merely an element of the total elegant design - still the classiest set of initials a handbag can carry. (Or a tote or a trunk or etcetera.) The pattern is still being ripped off by fashion pirates today. Yet I bet that L.V. would rather be stolen from than to have to steal-real Originals are like that.

The new Louis Vuitton store at 51 East 57th Street houses the complete collection. Go, and treat yourself to something handsome-you'll have it forever.

READING AND WRITING: So what, 30,000 books are slated to come out this year-too many kids are getting sprung, even from high school, unable to read. Makes you mad, doesn't it? Their teachers probably are the same ones who educate them to say "between he and I."
• Literary agent Roslyn Targ admitted that "there is more trash out in the book market than on TV, mostly because there are so many more books." 
• Tom Wolfe (his latest book, The Right Stuff) believes that "The place not to be is middle class or middle age."

• Joseph Brodsky, the Russian poet, was asked how many readers did a poet need in order to feel successful. Three, he said.
 
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