But here, amid racks of Champagne-colored tulle and ivory satin dappled with pearls, things appear to be cheerful.

Pacing his 7,000-square-foot loft, amid racks and racks of clothes from old movies, shows and soaps, he stops to talk to a handful of women who are looking over the clothes.

In a side room off this passage, an- other attendant moving amid trays and racks of earth looked up in dim candlelight as six armed men came tramping through.

John V. Lindsay, Beverly Sills, Paul Newman and Hugh L. Carey are among those who consumed cold fusilli salad and Chardonnay amid racks of underwear and raincoats, while Mr. Traub introduced bemused but eager ambassadors and ministers of culture and trade.

Mr. Colon is the only man in the department, where saleswomen greet their regular customers with air kisses, but he seems at home amid racks of scents by Jean Patou, Calvin Klein and Lancome.

A block away from 80 Arts, beyond the town house that the painter David Salle has lavishly rehabilitated, lies the lime-green Habana Outpost, an eco-friendly cafe where mothers push downtown babies on swings amid racks of folkloric skirts, priced to sell.

Amid endless racks of dusty artifacts - about one million objects, collected decades earlier by the oil heir George Gustav Heye - she discovered boxes of human remains and sacred items, including six masks from her own tribe, the Qualla Boundary Cherokee of North Carolina.

In another room, amid racks of the finished product, one of the farm's 20-odd employees was building a spectacularly mounded peach pie, painstakingly arranging the sliced fruit in perfect concentric circles.

Two days before the "sales tax-free week" formally began, Mr. Giuliani left City Hall and walked across Chambers Street to Modell's Sporting Goods store, where a lectern bearing the city seal and placed amid racks of sweatshirts suggested that his visit was expected.