October 30, 1986

Every month or so, the New York decorator David Easton comes to Europe to go shopping. Hardly pleasure jaunts, these brief trips typically include stops in Lisbon, Madeira, Paris and London, days crammed with appointments, darting from place to place in search of the antique rugs, linens, fabrics, furniture and the like that he cannot find in America. ''Engish and European dealers tend to have the larger, more unusual pieces,'' he says. ''American dealers hesitate to bring in such things.'' ''It's like planning a military campaign,'' Mr. Easton explained recently, leafing through typewritten pages of items he wants for clients and a hand-written itinerary of the places he will go. His company, David Anthony Easton Inc., designs both houses and interiors. Known for his British country-house look, Mr. Easton has created large Georgian-style homes for wealthy American clients, most of whom insist on anonymity. So London is a focal point for the 49-year-old designer, not only for concentrated shopping stints, but also as a source rich in material for research in architecture and furniture.

Negotiations between Carl C. Icahn and the USX Corporation are moving along at a pace that may soon produce an agreement, some Wall Street sources speculated yesterday. Such an accord could encourage the multimillionaire New Yorker to take a profit and abandon his $8 billion takeover offer for the company, they said. Other sources maintained, however, that as of late yesterday, nothing of that nature had developed. Mr. Icahn has invested $651 million in the oil and steel giant as part of a campaign he began less than three months ago.

Mayor Koch yesterday outlined a sweeping new emergency housing plan in the five boroughs - 20 new shelters to house 7,000 people - for the city's growing number of homeless men, women and families. In a letter to the borough presidents dated Monday and released yesterday, Mr. Koch proposed building 15 family shelters, each with private rooms for 100 families, and 5 adult shelters, each with 200 beds. The program could cost as much as $100 million, officials said. The Mayor stressed that the shelters, to be built over the next two years, would be ''equitably distributed'' among all five boroughs, and asked the borough presidents to take part in selecting the sites for the projects. City officials said that, by involving the borough leaders in the site selections and scaling back the size of the new shelters, the city hopes these plans will be more palatable to the politicians and their constituents, who have delayed or derailed past projects with objections to having the homeless sheltered in their neighborhoods.

With winter weather still weeks away, officials in many cities around the country are already reporting record numbers of homeless people seeking shelter and food from hard-pressed local agencies. The officials also report a dramatic change in the characteristics of the shifting populations of homeless: more women, more children and younger men, who typically will spend more time unemployed and unable to afford adequate shelter than in the past. ''It's going to be a long, hard winter, regardless of the temperature,'' said Ruth Shechter, director of the Housing Information Center in Kansas City, Mo. 'Not Your Stereotypical Wino' Mildred Lincoln, a board member of the Coalition for the Homeless in Chicago, said: ''We're seeing the trend of needs change drastically from just 'the poor' to 'middle class suddenly poor.' They lose their jobs, their credit cards and their mortgage. It's definitely not your stereotypical wino in the alley anymore.''

Living Space To make a real campus out of its Lincoln Center campus, Fordham University is planning a 20-story dormitory for about 1,000 students, to open in the fall of 1989. For now, the only quarters that Fordham offers are in the Empire Hotel nearby, where three dozen students live - out of a total enrollment of 6,000. The Jesuit university has watched attendance erode at Lincoln Center, particularly in the undergraduate division. ''Students today who are going to buy a private education want the full experience,'' said Dr. Brian J. Byrne, Fordham's director of government relations and urban affairs. ''If you can't provide one, it puts you at a competitive disadvantage.''