Fine Art of Stocking Stuffing

This is the season to be reminded that people still occasionally spend hugely--and will buy almost anything. For instance, baby pacifiers reportedly are being worn as a fashion accessory by adolescents and young adults. The Baltimore Sun reports that pacifiers are popular with those who make the club scene and are being sold in shops catering to teen-agers.

Theories about why infant soothers are trendy vary. One expert theorized that pacifiers represent a yearning to return to the womb. Another told the Sun that pacifiers first showed up on the rap scene before being adopted more widely. Still another said pacifiers simply illustrate the herd instinct behind all fads.

“For whatever reason pacifiers started, other groups have picked them up and decided they were just fun to wear,” this observer said, in a brilliant analysis.

Meanwhile . . . actor John Forsythe was spotted last weekend scooping up 50 bottles of Gucci’s men’s and women’s fragrances. The Gucci people, of course, were thrilled enough to send out a statement testifying that conspicuous consumption isn’t extinct--yet. . . . Roy and Linda Silver of the Roy men’s skin care line are pushing a travel razor as a sort of pet rock for the ‘90s. It actually looks like a big tube of lipstick. But when the base is twisted, a replaceable twin-blade razor pops out of the top. The Silvers of Studio City claim the razor, about $30, is meeting little price resistance.

Here’s hoping nobody gets all three for Christmas.

* ELEVATING CARDIN: Pierre Cardin, the first designer to venture into ready-to-wear clothing 35 years ago, has become the first designer inducted into the Academie des Beaux Arts.

The 70-year-old couturier last week joined the Academie, whose other members include mime Marcel Marceau, writer-actor Peter Ustinov, filmmaker Federico Fellini and musician Yehudi Menuhin.

Cardin was elected last year to fill the seat of actor Pierre Dux, who died in 1990. Membership is a national honor; members are not required to perform any duties.

The Academie des Beaux Arts is one of five “classes” of the Institut Francais, created in 1795. The class of Beaux Arts has 50 members, ranging from painters and engravers to musicians.

“I’m thrilled to be the first designer elected to this honor,” Cardin said before the ceremony, for which he wore a uniform of his own design.

* HAUT FELONY DRESSING: Criminals dressed for the part when they ripped off a diamond necklace and bracelet worth $5 million from the Geneva branch of the New York jeweler Harry Winston, Swiss police said this week. An elegantly dressed man and woman, estimated to be in their 40s, made off with the jewels Nov. 23 at the high-security shop on the third floor of a luxurious shopping area, police said.

Police said the theft had been kept quiet at the request of the jeweler, but it was reported Tuesday in the newspaper La Suisse.

The thieves spoke excellent French and were described as chic and well-mannered. The woman wore a large black cape, which police speculated helped to hide the jewels.

A spokesman for the jeweler declined to say how the thieves were able to remove the jewels without being noticed. Two saleswomen showed the jewels--a $4.3-million necklace and a $645,000 bracelet--while two others watched.

* AROMATHERAPY: A 39-year-old Norwegian astrophysics student who lives in a cave and wears torn and dirty green clothes has gone to court after being banned from taking examinations because he smells.

The perpetual student, who has attended the university since 1971, asked a court this week to overrule the decision by Oslo University and award him up to $470,000 in compensation, Reuters reported.

“He has been banned from taking exams since 1981 because the university says his body and clothes smell so bad that he cannot sit in a room together with other students,” the man’s lawyer, Petter Graver, told Reuters. A ruling is not due for several weeks.

The man wore a suit for his court appearance. No word on whether it was a clean suit.