Bling Fling

What bleak economy? Designers are using pricey baubles as if it were still boom time. In addition to Victoria's Secret's diamond bra and Stuart Weitzman's $1 million Oscar shoe (this March, look for a starlet in his $2 million shoe), Levi's has created $85,000 jeans. The diamond-and-ruby-decked jeans will be awarded to the Super Bowl viewer who -- using clues revealed in a game-day spot and online -- guesses their hiding place. ''We're in a cut-velvet economy,'' says Carey Adina Karmel, co-author of Stylemakers: Inside Fashion, of all the excess. ''There's a real psychological need to go to the other extreme and indulge ourselves.'' So that explains those J. Lo and Ben shopping sprees.