Gown

Darlene Cerullo's trip to witness history hinged not on luck, connections, or how quickly she submitted her name to some government official. The 19-year-old Drexel Hill student is going to Tuesday's presidential inauguration because she knows how to pick a winner. Cerullo, a sophomore at Lafayette College, beat 150 fellow students in a 32-question election-poll contest at the Easton school. Her prize: two tickets to see Barack Obama take the oath of office Tuesday in Washington and to an inaugural ball that night.

Temple University's success in transforming the one-time commuter school into a thriving residential campus is causing growing pains in its neighborhood - prompting community residents to give university and city officials an earful last week during a heated town meeting. In the long-running town-and-gown drama around the North Philadelphia campus, this act comes with a twist: Rather than Temple angering its neighbors by expanding its footprint with new buildings or facilities, what irks nearby homeowners in the city's Yorktown neighborhood is that investors are buying up single-family homes and converting them into student apartments.

MANY YEARS ago, while in nursing school, I learned of infections - like MRSA and VRE - that were resistant to the available antibiotics. This was pretty scary stuff, and my fellow students and I carefully gloved, gowned and masked before entering the rooms of afflicted patients. We would perform our morning care and move on to other assigned tasks. Sometime in mid-morning, the resident would come for rounds, trailing interns and med students. They reminded me of the gods of Olympus, too high in the firmament to talk to the likes of us. They must have been godlike, or made of Teflon, as they went from room to room without ever once stopping for gloves, gowns and masks.

Far from the fancy designer salons and chic bridal boutiques in Philadelphia and New York City, Ideal Clothing is a little bit of haute couture tucked away in a Quonset hut on the way to the Jersey Shore. Generations of women have turned off Route 30 here for prom dresses, mother-of-the-bride gowns and cruise wear. But within the next few weeks, after Ideal sends one last high school girl out with her frothy prom gown carefully wrapped in a plastic garment bag, longtime employees will lock the front door and turn out the lights on a business that's been catering to the whims of event-bound women for 70 years.

National experts say having a thriving town near campus is increasingly important to college students. Rowan University has gotten the message. Once a sleepy teachers college, Rowan will become part of a nearly $100 million construction project this summer that will significantly change the environment for students. The Rowan Boulevard Project calls for a pedestrian-friendly road to be carved between the eastern edge of the leafy campus and downtown Glassboro, which will be revitalized and restyled into "a quintessential college town," according to the redevelopers.

The events were a day and a continent apart, but the jewel-toned ruched ballgowns and slinky metallic dresses donned by Philadelphians at the annual Academy Ball Saturday night were right on trend with what Hollywood stars wore at the following evening's Screen Actors Guild Awards. The resemblances were everywhere. Actress Eva Longoria's white, wide-strapped and glittery Naeem Khan gown was very similar in style to 24-year-old Karen Bruccoleri's Night Moves dress. A very pregnant Cate Blanchett turned heads in a heavily embellished gown by Nicolas Ghesquiere for Balenciaga, while Philadelphia's Daria Pew chose a capped-shoulder red gown by Oscar de la Renta with similar embroidery.

EVER SINCE SHE was two years old, Cindy Berger Nissen fantasized about the ultimate, fairy-tale wedding. Three months ago the dream was realized. Wearing a Swarovski crystal-encrusted ballgown, she and her groom walked down a petal-strewn aisle into the Hotel Hershey as a 12-piece orchestra played. Before dancing a rumba before 150 guests, Kevin Nissen , 31, a helicopter mechanic, bowed to his bride, who curtseyed in return. It wasn't completely over the top though. The 26-year-old leasing manager passed on wearing the glass slippers she'd found and also on wearing a tiara (she'd already worn one to her junior prom)

The great Mexican-born American dance master Jose Lim?n fiercely dominated the stage. His intellect, artistry and sociopolitical ethics throbbed intensely through his every sinew. He danced what he believed. When he died in 1972, Lim?n left behind a repertoire based on his work and that of dance innovator Doris Humphrey, his mentor and artistic director. The 60-year-old Lim?n Dance Company, which he founded with Humphrey, commissions works by other choreographers, but its Dance Celebration run, which began Thursday night at the Annenberg Center and ends tonight, shows only purely divine Lim?n works.

Virginia Flower Binzen, 80, of Chesterbrook, an artist and native Australian who became a Philadelphia booster, died of cancer Saturday at Bryn Mawr Hospital. Mrs. Binzen was married for 56 years to Peter Binzen, a retired Inquirer business columnist. The couple met on a ski slope in Austria. She was traveling in Europe, and he was working as a freelance journalist. They married in 1951 in London and moved to Philadelphia when he became a reporter with the Evening Bulletin. In 1952 they bought one of the original homes in Levittown.

On many levels, designer Marc Jacobs is a genius in America's ready-to-wear fashion industry. And the ticket to his show is the most coveted of Fashion Week. We know he will surprise. We expect him to give us a new silhouette, possibly even confuse us. So the world's premier fashionistas waited Monday night outside the New York State Armory, eager to get into Jacobs' show. As the 9 p.m. start time dragged out toward 11:04 p.m., we sat there on uncomfortable steel benches, intrigued by what appeared to be broken windows shooting up from the runway.