souvenirs de paris; In jeweled miniature, Van Cleef & Arpels creates a fantasy vision of the City of Light.

Byline: Lynn Yaeger

Josephine Baker walking a leopard with a diamond collar; Jackie and Lee enjoying one special summer; Kiki de Montparnasse entrancing Hemingway with her cancan; Rick and Ilsa soaring down the Champs- lysees in an open car; Ninotchka longing for a hat; Sabrina at the Cordon Bleu; Sartre and de Beauvoir conspiring under a cloud

of Gauloise smoke.

So many Paris reveries, some real, some fictional, all with the power to seduce and dazzle. It is this town's mystique, its ineluctable allure, that Van Cleef & Arpels, ensconced at 22 Place Vendome for exactly a century, is gleefully tapping into with Une Journee a Paris, its newest collection.

The Une Journee a Paris line includes 75 haute joaillerie pieces-some one-of-a-kind, others more widely produced-that will be available worldwide beginning this month. "Let's celebrate Paris! Luxury! A bit of eternal life! Because Paris is about love! After all, you don't come to Paris for business," beams Stanislas de Quercize, Van Cleef's president and CEO.

One day in Paris, with the jewelry to go with it! And what a day. We plan to take Van Cleef's proposed Une Journee a Paris literally and spend a single afternoon visiting the landmarks that gave birth to the jewelry: such stalwart inspirations as the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame and the Tuileries (glorious, to be sure, but stalwarts nonetheless). It's always fun to see them again-but you might be excused if you took a minute to imagine what your own personal jewelry tour of the town would look like. Could there be a diminutive Colette boutique, its window rendered in rock crystal? Or a tiny Porte de Clignancourt flea-market booth carved of onyx? Maybe a minuscule Mai '68 demonstrator with a quarter-inch picket sign with

a bas l'etat spelled out in sapphires and emeralds?