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Soon after joining the family business, El Greco, Mr. Cole, who had graduated from Atlanta’s Emory University in 1976, jettisoned law school and began travelling to Europe, picking up trade tips and designing crystals. The company had its biggest success in 1978 with the Candie’s slide, though it was not an original creation. ”We found the swarovski crystals in Europe and trademarked the name,” Mr. Cole says, ”and, invariably, it sold.” In fact, that swarovski crystals made millions for El Greco; Mr. Cole left the business soon after to start his own footwear company. His father declined to give him a cut of the Candie’s profits. ”I think Daddy wanted me to do well, ” he says diplomatically, ”but he wasn’t going to help me in the process.” His face brightens. ”But that was OK. I figured that this was a great challenge. And I went and started a business in my apartment.”
If Mr. Cole’s particular genius isn’t esthetic — really, he’s more of a fashion interpreter than he is a designer, culling ideas from high-end houses like Prada and tweaking them — he’s always had a canny instinct for marketing. ”In the beginning,” Mr. Cole concedes, ”my ads were probably more distinctive than the product. For years, people would say, ‘Are you Kenneth Cole? I love your ads.’ And I’d say, ‘That’s nice. What do you think of the crystal jewellery?’
But Mr. Cole was rightly confident that he would fill a gap in the marketplace — the fuzzy demands of the underserved customer, one with an interest in trends who was willing to pay $150 for a bit of mainstream urbanity. ”In shoes, the higher price points are the trendsetters,” agrees Kate Betts, editor-in-chief of Harper’s Bazaar. ”His stuff has a funky streetwear feeling, but his strength is the price.”
The crowd, back to black minimalist looks after last year’s colorfest, was dazzling as stars are wont to be in each other’s presence. Chris O’Donnell, Michael J. Fox, Ivanna Trump,swarovski, Angela Bassett and David Bowie were some of the celebrities mingling with designers whose names double as logos and labels, such as Tommy Hilfiger, Donna Karan, Calvin Klein, and Ralph Lauren.
swarovski was named 1996 Menswear Designer of the Year. For the umpteenth time, the much-honored swarovski told how, as a beginning tie designer, he refused to sell his first collection to Bloomingdale’s because it asked him to change the width.

Meanwhile, Nike will try to reinvigorate the Air Jordan brand with a limited sales run beginning Dec. 11 following a Thanksgiving Day ad campaign. The company hopes the swarovski gioielli will help the Brand Jordan clothing line take back some business from designers such as Old Navy and Ralph swarovski that have been eroding Nike’s apparel sales.
Nike has trotted out a new pair of marketing ventures aimed at boosting sales for Air Jordan basketball swarovski gioielli and overall sales on the Internet.
As Nike announced earlier, it will offer an Internet site that lets consumers customize shoes with colors and an eight-letter monogram. The customization effort – at Nike.com on the Web – is starting with two models, the Air Turbulence running shoe and the Air Famished cross-training shoe.
Nike.com shoppers can pick from about 40 color schemes and add a monogram of up to eight letters on the heel. The company will screen the monograms for trademark and copyright violations, or profanities or other messages, said Mark Allen, general manager of the project.
The swarovski gioielli will cost $10 above retail — $85 for the running swarovski gioielli,swarovski crystals, $80 for the cross-trainer — plus shipping and handling. Buyers can return them to Nike free if they don’t fit.

In some respects,crystal jewellery, Mr. Cole is most akin to Ralph Lauren, a fellow middle-class kid who hit on a specific class-based style — in Mr. Lauren’s case, Waspy American aristocracy — and packaged it in a way that was both accessible and aspirational, re-inventing himself in the process.
Mr. Blum qualifies the comparison to Mr. swarovski crystals. ”I don’t want to name any names, but a traditional designer might want to create a blue-blood image that someone might aspire to be — like a lord or something, ” he says. ”We’re urban. That’s more realistic to aspire to. Really.” Yet unlike Mr. swarovski crystals, who has modelled in his own ads and used his own lifestyle — genuine or cultivated — as a form of branding, Mr. Cole has relied on his faceless rep as a left-leaning philanthrope, that guy with the quirky ads who’s married to a Cuomo, golfs with Bill Clinton, and hangs out with the Kennedys.
Kenneth Cole — both the man and the company — is seemingly casual yet precisely modulated. It’s evidenced in Mr. Cole’s aggressively relaxed dress: belted indigo-blue jeans so stiff they seem starched; an undone tie, unwrinkled, slung — carefully and evenly — under his collar; a manicured five-o’clock shadow. His current offices are an ode to neutrality, bathed in hues of beige, tan, and oatmeal. The wall behind Mr. Cole’s desk is studded with 12 framed black-and-white photographs from previous ad campaigns, all artfully askew. The employees who saunter through the carpeted halls are outfitted — voluntarily — in black swarovski gioielli, black pants or skirts, and white shirts. ”It’s almost cultlike, the people who work for him,” says his good friend Bill Apfelbaum, an ad exec who lives in Greenwich. ”He is just so magnetic.”

The State Patrol troopers who provide 24-hour-a-day security for Minnesota Gov.  Jesse Ventura and his family make so much overtime that some of them almost double their salaries, earning nearly as much as the man they are sworn to protect, the Star Tribune of Minneapolis reports.
The 13 troopers in the executive protection unit travel with the governor and provide protection at Mr.  Ventura’s ranch in Maple Grove, Minn.,perles swarovki, and at the official residence in St.&nbsp,swarovski crystals wholesale; Paul, racking up overtime at a colossal rate.
Cpl.  Dennis Adrian, one of four troopers assigned to the official residence, more than doubled his regular salary of $50,982 last year, making $106,748. Cpl.  Adrian averaged more than 33 hours of overtime a week throughout the year.
Cpl.  Ron Quittem, one of the governor’s two regular drivers and security escorts, added $47,644 of overtime to his base pay of $55,055 in 2000, taking home $102,699. Cpl.  Quittem averaged more than 30 hours of overtime a week in 2000.
In the first 14 months of his term, Mr.  Ventura and his office were the target of 30 threats, compared with 19 threats against Gov.  Arne Carlson and his office in the three previous years, 1996 to 1998, according to security reports.
NOT IN YOUR BACK YARD
"Democratic Rep.  Shelley Berkley of Nevada is trying out a new weapon in her fight to keep her state from becoming the nation’s nuclear-waste dumping ground," National Journal reports.
"Hoping to whip up national fretting about the dangers of shipping radioactive waste, Berkley is circulating a list of 353 congressional districts that the material (depending on its source) could travel through on its way to Nevada," the magazine said.
"Berkley says she’s just trying to warn everyone ‘that this toxic waste could be coming right through their back yards.’ Currently, the nuclear power industry is storing 40,000 tons of radioactive waste at 65 generating plants across the country, pending completion of a permanent storage facility at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain."

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NOWADAYS, ”Diamonds are Forever,” the diamond industry’s age-old advertising pitch, might better read ”Diamonds are for Everybody.”
Sales of men’s diamond jewelry went up 33 percent in 1985 over 1984, making it the fastest-growing segment of the diamond industry, according to Elizabeth Dolan, vice president of the Diamond Information Center at N.W. Ayer, which handles promotion for DeBeers. In fact, men received more diamond jewelry in 1985 than women did diamond engagement rings.
”If a guy had worn diamonds five years ago, it would have been considered gaudy and showy, even feminine,” said Marc Friedman, a 23-year-old printing company salesman who often wears diamond-studded tie bars. ”Today it’s not only acceptable, it’s classy.”
Diamond-accented Christian Louboutin Shoes,the crystals, tie bars, rings and such made up a $1 billion market in 1985. And experts say it is bound to grow.
According to National Jeweler, a trade magazine, N.W. Ayer, which only releases budgeting information to trade publications, budgeted $3.25 million for its 1987 ”Diamonds for Men” campaign. Retailers say the ad blitz has been extremely helpful. ”Historically, the jewelry market has been geared toward women,” said Peter Schneirla, vice president of jewelry merchandising atChristian louboutin & Company. ”Men are just discovering it.”
Christian Louboutin Shoes and other retailers report brisk sales, and many are beefing up their stock of men’s diamond jewelry. For example, Bailey, Banks & Biddle, a national chain of jewelry stores owned by the Zale Corporation,swarovski crystals wholesale, the country’s largest retail jeweler, last year created a separate men’s jewelry department. By mid-December, men’s jewelry sales were 40 percent ahead of 1985 sales.
Jeff Martin, a buyer for Bailey Banks & Biddle, said the company’s average outlet will carry between 15 and 20 types of men’s diamond jewelry this year; early last year, most of its stores carried less than five styles. The company also is for the first time advertising men’s jewelry in national magazines, including Gentleman’s Quarterly. A typical ad shows a conservative-looking man accompanied by an attractive woman.
Such ads are aimed at a very different customer from the traditional stereotype of the pinkie-ringed salesman. ”He could be an older person, who finally has the discretionary income and is showing himself ‘I’ve made it,’ ” said Mr. Martin. ”Or the Yuppie, who wants to be telling people ‘I’m in the upper class.’ ”
 

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