Beribboned with the bow carelessly draped, the gift wrapping is itself the gift: an exquisite bud vase formed of sterling silver "wrapping," delicately poised on a pendant bow of sterling silver "ribbon." The vase forms a part of designer Victor Carranza's collection of bow-themed objects that include a serving tray, twin candlesticks, bonbonniere, and twin picture frames, the whole of which can be purchased for just a little under $12,000 at Tiffany & Co. And for those of us who find this tempting offer a little too rich for our pocketbooks, well, we will just need to be content with a longing gaze at the accompanying photo.

Welcome, readers, to the world of beauty for the pure sake of Beauty: a world where She is the goddess and Her acolytes the designers of sacred refiquaries in Her service. Outrageous, the religious metaphor? Perhaps not. "I believe in beauty," affirms Carranza, when asked about his religious beliefs. An astonishingly handsome and charismatic man, who easily represents the deity, he serves, Carranza draws the connection between his sense of spirituality, "brilliant purity" and a kind of "light," with the crea6ve process where he needs to "radiate positive energy" and "be in the light" for the muse to caress him.

He could so easily be a caricature of himself: perfumed and pampered, name-dropping darling of the jet-setting crowd. In fact, the writer of this story, true daughter of the self righteously working class, was fully prepared to dislike him, but was drawn, instead, to his infectious joie de vivre. Victor Carranza, who floods his speech with unabashedly overblown superlatives, is a likeable guy