Trade Secrets.(swap party)

Byline: EDITOR: ALEXANDRA KOTUR

Fashion-conscious women have found a recession-minded way to round out their closets. William Norwich joins the party.

Cooking up a storm of vegetable and pasta salads in Maggie Betts 's Greenwich Village kitchen the other night, Jessica Joffe saw a great culinary opportunity: "There aren't any boys comingshould we have garlic bread?"

The occasion was a buffet supper before a swap party: ten budget-minded women filling in their wardrobes by trading clothing. Just what the accountant ordered, swap parties are becoming the next big thing across the country, the height of recessionista chic, a way to economize and socialize at the same time. Conducted in various sizes and themes, with or without deployments of food and drink prepared by a host or by communal potluck, swap parties are like a version of show-and-tell but taken to the next level, where you can barter an item of interest in exchange for another.

Artists display and swap their works. People who like to cook exchange recipes. Last year's children's parties, all sugar-and-price, can now be financially friendly family gatherings where children bring an already-read book to pass along to another child. Instead of Jonas Brothers impersonators and heaps of presentsparents now give theirs in private to avoid fostering competition and hurt feelingsthere is a simple birthday cake and a chorus of "Happy Birthday."

This being Manhattan, where sometimes it seems like everyone is Six Degrees of Karl Lagerfeld , the participants tonight were fashion-connected, the sort who hear about private sample sales or discounts first. The E-mail invitation chez Maggie included specific instructions to bring at least two to three seriously viable fashion items from their closets (size didn't matter), handbags, shoes, and costume jewelry. Best basics were encouraged, too. Any surplus would be delivered to the nearest branch of Dress for Success, a nonprofit organization that provides interview clothing and career counseling to low-income women.

The guests assembled at 6:30. "I have pre-swap anxiety," said Poppy Delevingne (see It Girl). "What about me? I am trying to swap my things for maternity clothes," countered fashion consultant Ferebee Taube , pregnant with twins.