4. the triangle; With wide-leg Hepburn trousers under slight blouses, Susan Fales-Hill cuts a crisp 1940s figure.

Byline: William Norwich

Susan Fales-Hill sails into the Cafe Carlyle and takes her seat at a table near the stage just in time for a bite of dinner before Eartha Kitt, a longtime family friend, enters purring and singing, magnificent as ever at the age of 79.

It is an old-fashioned night in New York, just as Fales-Hill likes it.

Model-tall at five feet nine and a half, she is, fashion-wise, reminiscent of Katharine Hepburn. Fales-Hill wears a fitted periwinkle-blue silk shirt with dramatic sleeves by B. Michael, a favorite designer, and sleekly but glamorously proportioned-meaning movement-navy trousers by Carolina Herrera. As always, the Harvard-educated writer and philanthropist-who sits on the boards of American Ballet Theatre and the Studio Museum in Harlem-turns heads on her way to the table. She has the aura of perfection that comes when, all clothing experimentation done, one has arrived at a look of one's own. Her look is trousers, wide-leg trousers, that narrow-on-top, flowing-over-the-legs 1940s silhouette.

Earlier that day, at home wearing butter-yellow Valentino pants and a white Moschino Gypsy shirt, she described her evolution from Lycee Francais schoolgirl to Studio 54 habitue to working single woman to married lady. The proper, spacious Park Avenue apartment she shares with her three-year-old daughter and investment-banker husband was filled with family furniture, paintings, and photographs; showbiz razzle-dazzle and American history mix at every turn.

For the uninitiated, or anyone who has not had the pleasure of reading her book, Always Wear Joy: My Mother Bold and Beautiful, Fales-Hill's mother was the heralded actress and singer Josephine Premice. In 1958, while starring with Lena Horne and Ossie Davis in the Broadway musical Jamaica, Premice was introduced by the late, great social arbiter John Galliher to her husband-to-be, Timothy Fales, son of a Wall Street banker and a descendant of Pilgrims. The interracial marriage caused an international sensation. The Faleses escaped to Rome just in time for the La Dolce Vita years; daughter Susan was born there. They returned to New York six years later to a sprawling Upper West Side apartment that soon became a salon for actors, artists, and social people. Young Susan grew up speaking English, French, Italian, a bit of Spanish, and even some Creole (Josephine Premice's people were Haitian).

"Come," Fales-Hill said. "My two loves: books and