People

By Michele Orecklin

WHY WORRY ABOUT HEMLINES?

Designers often more associated with whimsy than worry seemed to project some millennial anxieties at last week's couture shows in Paris. John Galliano's models, left, sported hats adorned with dead foxes and pheasants--demonstrating how Dior customers can simultaneously snare a meal and a fashion statement. Alexander McQueen at Givenchy suggested that not only supermodels but also the human race may be extinct next century, exhibiting his clothes on fiber-glass mannequins that briefly popped up from the floorboards. And Paco Rabanne illustrated his prediction that the Mir space station will kill thousands when it crash-lands in Paris in August by showing a metallic satellite dress, center. For Rabanne, the end has already arrived. After 33 years, he presented his final couture collection.

ED HARRIS LEARNS THE ART OF POURING IT ON

Just as a lot of actors think they can direct, a lot of parents think their two-year-olds can splatter paint as well as Jackson Pollock. But ED HARRIS can attest that neither task is as simple as it seems. The actor is making his directorial debut--and playing the lead role--in a film based on the abstract expressionist, a project that has consumed Harris for six years. "It became a personal project," says Harris, "and I didn't want to hand it over to anyone else to direct."

A PAGE FROM MICHAEL'S DIARY

JULY 18 Join family members of former South African President Nelson Mandela to celebrate his 81st birthday

JUNE 28 Receive minor burns from fireworks used in a charity concert in Munich, Germany

JUNE 25 Appear with BOYZ II MEN, among others, at a benefit concert in Seoul, South Korea

APRIL 22 Finalize plans for a New Year's Eve 2000 concert to be performed first in Sydney, Australia, then across the international date line in Honolulu

DAILY Continue to alter appearance in alarming ways

WHAT I DID ON MY SUMMER VACATION

He wears a poker face on the bench, but sometimes Chief Justice WILLIAM REHNQUIST just can't stop his irrepressibly jaunty side from shining through. His "Old Fashioned Sing-along," for example, is considered a highlight of the annual 4th Circuit Judicial Conference. This year, however, some lawyers took exception to the inclusion of Dixie in his songbook. Many consider the Confederate marching song, which was played at Jefferson Davis' inauguration, to be nostalgic for slavery. Rehnquist is not commenting publicly, but we do have some insight into what else he's doing in his downtime. Earlier this month, he entered, and won, a contest in the Washington Post's Dr. Gridlock column by figuring out that a license plate reading 1 DIV 0 referred to an Infiniti. He's sure to clean up during Supreme Court Justice Week on Jeopardy!