An Apple a Day

The overachiever of the fruit world has another item to add its resume, and just in time for the first day of school: fashion icon. Apples appear on everything from jeans to perfumes to jewelry this season.

"Every single designer is catching onto the apple theme," the co-founder of the fashion and beauty Web site www.topbutton.com, Dianna Feldman, said. "I think it was just the thing of the moment."

Some designers have even gone so far as to devote entire fashion lines to the fruit. Rapper Nelly's Apple Bottoms line has less to do with the fruit than the shape of a woman's derriere, but the fruity motif pops up in apple-shaped pockets and zipper pulls on almost every item of clothing.

If Apple Bottoms is concerned with the fruit's form, then Beauty takes advantage of its function. It has created a line of cleansers, peels, and nutrient masks whose main ingredient is green apple. "Apples are a great source of alpha-hydroxy acids," the company's chief executive, Karen Behnke, said. "Every drop of our product feeds the skin with vitamins and nutrients." Apparently, an apple a day can also keep the wrinkles away.