But as amusing and sociologically significant as all this underwear is, the more engaging part of the show deals with high-fashion clothes that use corsets or corsetry as part of their charms.

The Empire silhouette contributed to making clothes of the 1795-1820 period generally less confining and cumbersome than high-fashion clothes of the earlier 18th and later 19th centuries.

LEAD: Nancy Reagan is not the first President's wife whose appetite for high-fashion clothes has come under scrutiny.

Josephine Blair Hughes, a super-saleswoman who sold high-fashion clothes to socially prominent women for four decades, died on Monday in her apartment in Manhattan.

A self-declared maverick within the nation's clubby newspaper establishment, Mr. Neuharth drinks martinis and dresses in high-fashion clothes of black, white and gray.

She'd been what most people would call plain: no makeup, no high-fashion clothes, no airs.

Within a couple of months I'd splurged about £2,500 on all sorts of high-fashion clothes.

But for now it's a matter of showing her wares to more big stores, stores that once counted on Mary Ann Restivo to dress their customers in high-fashion clothes at less than couture prices.

The convergence of high-fashion and mass-market clothes has been hastened by the public ownership of apparel companies.