Gifts, great and small; The best holiday presents don't have to be big or have big price tags.

Byline: Lynn Yaeger

f decades of gift-giving teach anything, it is this: The reaction of the recipient is in no way commensurate with the price of the present. We've all been through it-the $5 bauble opened rapturously; the $500 behemoth discarded with an unconvincing thank-you and a sad sigh. Think about it: How many overblown presents currently languish in the bottom of your closet (visions of re-gifting periodically dancing in your head), while a trifle someone once found for you remains as treasured and priceless as a love letter?

Yet that's only one reason not to break the bank this holiday season. The other is far more important: In these fraught times, what could be more appropriately and welcomingly stylish than a modest, gentle expression of love?

So bring on the downsized gift! But how can I spend less than $100 and not feel chintzy, you wonder? In point of fact, this is almost surpassingly easy. Over the course of a few leisurely shopping afternoons, a host of delightful items recommended themselves to us-and most cost far less than a C note.

Don't think you have to lower your standards, either. If you'll die before you'll give anything that's not wrapped in a burnt-orange box, chin up: You can still shop at Hermes. Buy the elegantly striped playing cards (fun for candlelight gin-rummy games during blackouts!) or perhaps a ChaIne d'Ancre trinket dish for storing an antique Cartier Art Deco bracelet on the night table.

Latter-day Albertine on your list? Give her a silk pocket square from Charvet, Proust's favorite haberdasher. These cost $85, are signed charvet place vendome in one corner, and come in a variety of color combinations. (You might consider red with green pin dots, in view of the season.) In any case, they stand ready to fulfill their traditional role-peeking from a jacket pocket-though an enterprising woman might let one dangle from the strap of a Balenciaga bag. (The cashmere-lined napa-leather gloves you gave her, $69 at Sermoneta, are inside. But no black or brown-this is a gift! Get the powder blue! )

Charvet isn't the only men's shop that offers surprisingly good gifts for women. At J. Press, a store that was accoutring Ivy Leaguers at the same time Charvet was outfitting Proust, long striped wool college mufflers are only $69; even if the recipient didn't go to Yale, she might like the navy, white, and crimson combination. For an entirely different sort of friend, who spent her youth skulking around in a black shroud, dash down to St. Mark's Place and pick up a skull scarf, available in the $20 range and a distant relation of those selling out across town at the Alexander McQueen store. (Remember that Mrs. Vreeland recommended a splash of bad taste to perk up any ensemble.)