a show of hands; Gloves beckon Lynn Yaeger, who looks for a pair that fits her style like, well, you know.(Product/service evaluation)

Byline: Lynn Yaeger

Always one, never two. You check your purse or the pockets of your coat, but you know it will be in vain: One glove is gone. Now what to do with the other? You can't very well toss out a hand-knitted mitten bought in the Cotswolds or the rosebud-bedecked kidskin selected after much delicious deliberation in Florence.

The fact that you could never hold on to the two of them for an entire season leads you to abandon, at least briefly, stylish gloves altogether. So you buy deadly boring black or brown, bare of lining, and of course now you never, ever misplace one. They stick like glue to the bottom of your purse.

This fall, no matter how careless you are, it won't be possible to keep your mitts out of glamorous gloves. It began with a plethora of examples on the runway-at Comme des Garcons they didn't confine themselves to hands but climbed surreally up the fronts of pastel sweaters. And as the shows rolled by, the situation became clear: Even as your feet will be screaming to be shod in still more Lanvin ballet flats and scarlet-soled Louboutins, your hands will demand equal time.

But how to settle on a particular pair in a field of candidates as cluttered as the 2008 presidential contest? I decide to ease in slowly with a pair of classic but not-so-traditional Chanels rendered in forest-green lambskin and decorated with highly visible if delicate stitching and a tiny CC emblem at the wrist (an area that functions as a repository for designer insignia roughly equivalent to the temple on designer sunglasses). The gloves are slightly tame for my taste. I am drawn to another pair, Chanel's ode to motocross, made of thick brown leather with a curly-lamb lining that is veritably rough-hewn, if only by Chanel standards. (In a bow to the house, the palms are quilted.) They're gorgeous, but they're well within the purview of what we talk about when we talk about gloves.

Not so Louis Vuitton's raspberry-colored efforts, which require a deep theoretical commitment before I even put them on. First I slip a wrist-length, frankly undistinguished item over my hand. I've seen a ...