March 19, 1992

Parliament voted today to approve what some Israeli experts view as a historic change in the country's electoral system by passing a law providing for direct election of the Prime Minister. The change would take effect in elections that are to be held in 1996, and will not be in place for national elections scheduled for June 23.

Amid hundreds of red, white and blue balloons and talk of American competitiveness, the American Stock Exchange's Emerging Company Marketplace got under way yesterday, giving an exchange listing to 22 small companies -- mostly former penny stocks. Many of the companies had seen their prices rise sharply in the days before they began trading on the Amex, and the price increases continued yesterday in their first exchange trading. In some cases, the stocks were trading at several times what insiders paid for shares only weeks before.

IT'S not everyone who gets to keep her socks in a work of modern art by John Cederquist. Suzi Schiffer does. But then, Ms. Schiffer, a freelance television news producer, happens to be married to Franklin Parrasch, a devotee of avant-garde art furniture and a dealer in the kinds of pieces that make visitors to his gleaming new gallery, at 588 Broadway (near Prince Street)in SoHo, wonder who could ever want to live with these things.

Evelyn McClendon practically beamed as she surveyed her meticulously neat two-bedroom apartment in the St. Mary's Park Houses in the South Bronx. She has lived there, in apartment 8A, since the day the project opened 34 years ago. "People in New York hear the word 'projects' and they think rundown and nasty," she said recently. "But it's not that way here at St. Mary's. It's terrific and I've always enjoyed it.

Travelers on the seasonal fashion express landed in Paris this week and found themselves entering a time machine that touched down briefly in the 1950's, 60's and 70's before taking off for the 21st century. Designers in Milan and London have had their say about fall styles. Now it's time for Paris. The first designers to parade their latest offerings before the international fashion press and retailers are not the big names generally credited with setting the trends for others to follow. Their names are hardly household words. But they do speak for the younger generation and often manage to distill its current interests and preoccupations.