October 24, 1991

In a move likely to guarantee a hard-line Israeli delegation to the Middle East peace talks, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir bumped aside his relatively dovish Foreign Minister today and announced that he would personally head the negotiating team going to Madrid next week. After Mr. Shamir's rebuff, the Foreign Minister, David Levy, announced that he would not attend the conference at all. According to several officials, Mr. Shamir also told Mr. Levy that he intended to name an Israeli settler from the occupied territories to the delegation.

Yves Saint Laurent brought the French fashion showings to a satisfactory conclusion today. On Tuesday, Oscar de la Renta, introducing his collection here for the second season, also received acceptable grades. No major change in fashion is predicted by these two designers nor by any of the others who have presented their ready-to-wear collections in the last eight days of spring openings. There have been many self-conscious attempts to open up a brave new world of fashion, but none have particularly jelled. Two recurrent themes, neither new nor especially riveting, are the display of underwear as outerwear and the widespread use of transparent fabrics. The visible bra looks fine in playclothes, but in everything else it seems an aberration. Sheer fabrics have their place, but it can be assumed that when see-through blouses leave the runway, they will be worn with underpinnings.

TRYING to find a buildable parcel of land in California is almost as impossible as trying to find the money to buy it. That leaves remodeling. Many people who want a custom house in a desirable area, for example, purchase one of the vast supply of older, post-war ranch houses and remodel, often so extensively that little remains of the more modest, unassuming character of the original house.

Some of the most congested parts of Brooklyn can expect "nightmarish traffic" virtually until the end of the century, transportation officials said yesterday, as reconstruction continues on the Brooklyn Bridge and work has begun on the Gowanus Expressway. A new chapter in the long, bad dream starts at noon tomorrow -- and will last until 6 A.M. Monday -- as all Manhattan-bound lanes of the stately, 108-year-old suspension bridge are closed so new expansion joints can be fitted into the roadway.

In the late 1980's, Japan's auto makers took on Detroit and the Europeans with a remarkable array of new luxury cars, far bigger and far more gadget-laden than anything that had ever before emerged from Japanese auto factories. Now the Japanese are sending a new message: small is back. At the opening today of the biennial Tokyo Motor Show, the premier showcase for the Japanese auto industry's new technologies and designs, there was a flood of two-seater sports cars influenced by Mazda's hit Miata convertible. And there were a dozen or so egg-shaped commuter cars, as well as a category that was inevitable: "personal cars" that fit the driver comfortably but might be a squeeze for two.