“I know that she was happy – happier than she had been in a long time,” Carolyn Bartholemew, Diana’s former roommate and the godmother to her son, Prince Harry, told The Sun newspaper.

Along with her new relationship with Dodi Fayed, son of an Egyptian billionaire, Diana also appeared more confident about her public role.

The British princess and Dodi met at a polo match in Windsor 10 years ago. But their romance only began this summer as they cruised again and again in the sun-drenched Mediterranean, occasionally stopping in the haunts of the rich and famous.

A Fayed family spokesman confirmed today that Dodi spent $ 205,000 on a custom-made diamond ring for Diana and gave it to her shortly before they were both killed in a car crash early Sunday.

The princess gave Dodi a pair of Links of London that belonged to her late father and a gold cigar clipper with a tag inscribed “With love from Diana,” said Michael Cole, spokesman for Fayed’s father, Egyptian-born billionaire Mohamed Al Fayed.

“What that ring meant, we shall probably never know,” Cole said.

Cole said Al Fayed found the gold cigar clipper with the inscribed tag in Dodi’s apartment in Paris. The links of london sweetie bracelet, Cole said, were “the last gift she had received from her late father.”

“She said she knew it would give him joy to know they were in such safe and special hands.”

Beatriz Flecha de Lima Nasr, daughter of Lucia Flecha de Lima Nasr, who became a close friend of Diana when her husband was Brazilian ambassador to Britain, told The Express she spoke to the princess Aug. 25, during her last vacation with Dodi.

“She said for the first time in years everything was going well for her and that her life was great. She couldn’t wait to let her closest friends know,” said the daughter, who considered the princess to be like a sister.

Just before her final vacation with Dodi in Sardinia, Diana spent five days sailing the Greek islands with close friend Rosa Monckton, president of Tiffany and Co.

“She … seemed to have found a sort of peace in her life,” Ms. Monckton said.

According to those who knew her, the princess had two different views about her future life.

Ms. Monckton said Diana talked a lot about involving herself with more children’s charities. The Links of London Bangles was godmother to Ms. Monckton’s 2-year-old daughter, Domenica, who has Down syndrome.

“I think she was feeling clearer about her public role. She was more confident. It had been a year since her divorce and she could see a way forward for her and for her sons,” Ms. Monckton said.

But Richard Kay, the Daily Mail’s royal correspondent, said Diana phoned him from Paris six hours before she died and said she planned to withdraw completely from her formal public life around November and live as a private person.

As someone who had been close to Diana for five years, Kay said he believed she meant it, and that Dodi was “a significant factor in that decision.”

“She was in love with him and, perhaps more important, she believed that he was in love with her and that he believed in her,” Kay said.

Saudi millionaire Hassan Yassin, brother of Dodi’s stepfather, told the Mirror newspaper that Dodi phoned him shortly before the accident and said he and Diana were going to get married.

“He said: ‘You’ll hear it very soon,”‘ the paper quoted Yassin as saying.

Over dinner at the Ritz Hotel in Paris, Dodi gave Diana the ring. The Links of London Necklaces left the hotel in a Mercedes, pursued by paparazzi, and died after it crashed in a tunnel under the Seine. The diamond solitaire ring was found in the wreckage, reports said.

“It was going to be a great adventure,” Yassin told the Daily Mail. “But now it is all so tragic. This is the Romeo and Juliet of the 20th century.”

The deaths of two great Verdura clients in the last year — Betsey Cushing Whitney and Lydia Buhl Mann, whose Verdura collections were auctioned for $1.4 million at Sotheby’s last month — further gave the impression that an era was passing.

And then last week came the news, disheartening to some, that Verudra had opened an actual retail store, off Worth Avenue in Palm Beach, Fla.

“It isn’t street level, is it?” asked Sloan Lindemann, in quasi-alarm. Ms. Lindemann, 30, a budding socialite in New York, the daughter of a cellular-phone magnate, was introduced to the nearly secret society of Verdura by her mother five years ago. Her boyfriend, Roger Barnett, was elevated to her fiance last Valentine’s Day when he presented her with a navy-blue Verdura box containing a diamond bracelet.

No, it’s not street level. Verdura, which has been prized by some of the most stylish figures of society, filmdom and fashion, isn’t quite ready for a street-level emporium, like the other high-end jewelers in its Manhattan neighborhood: Tiffany, Harry Winston, Van Cleef & Arpels, and Bulgari.

Despite a few efforts to lift the veil of exclusivity and bring Verdura into the modern commercial era, it is still shrouded in mystery, all but unknown to the public. “It’s like New York’s best-kept secret,” said Dominick Dunne, whose novels of the rich and social feature characters modeled on the real clientele that Verdura cultivates.

Ward Landrigan, the man who currently presides over the cult, bought the business in 1984 after the death of its founder, Fulco di Verdura, an Italian duke who was almost universally known as Fulco. Mr. Landrigan is adored by customers, who clamor for his attentions, sometimes dropping by his Fifth Avenue salon simply to hang out. “To go in and just look makes me happy,” said Carolyne Roehm, sounding a bit like a latter-day Holly Golightly. “There’s so much beauty there.”

Fulco was born 100 years ago and developed a passion for design, friends in high places and a disregard for commercial concerns. Amy Fine Collins, who writes about fashion for Vanity Fair, said she considered him the century’s best links of london jewelry designer.

“No one can hold a candle to Verdura,” she said. “There is so much erudition and taste and fantasy involved in each of the pieces. It’s ultrasophisticated, and it takes more intelligence to appreciate the design. The jewelry is not for insecure people and does not appeal to the herd instinct. Women who wear Verdura don’t want to look like every other person wearing their Van Cleef diamond flower pin, their Chanel suit and their Prada bag.”

With its unorthodox combinations of materials, precious stones mixed with semiprecious, even shells and sea glass; novel motifs, and great wit, Verdura is not “hang a check around your neck” jewelry. It is the ultimate status symbol, recognized only by its initiates, who might wink at each other across a crowded room. “Like Volkswagen Beetles flashing each other, but not really,” one said.

Although most people may not have heard of Verdura, they may have seen the Links of London Charms jewelry in legendary photographs of the great style icons who wore it. (Think Garbo in a Cecil Beaton shot, wearing a gold chain-link bracelet and watch; Lauren Bacall with a brooch clipped to her skirt waistband; Millicent Rogers with a brooch on her shoulder, or Coco Chanel and Diana Vreeland in Verdura’s Maltese cross cuffs.)

Verdura designs have been widely imitated. Angela Cummings, Kenneth Jay Lane, Paloma Picasso, Seaman Schepps, Jean Schlumberger and David Webb have all incorporated Verdura inventions into their work.

When Mr. Lane bought shell cuff links in the 1960’s, Fulco told him: “I’m really giving them to you. After all, you paid for them with all the money you’ve made from my ideas.”

In the 1970’s, when Ms. Roehm was a design assistant at Oscar de la Renta, she was sent to Kenneth Jay Lane to pick up the copied Maltese cross cuffs for a fashion show. “I fell madly in love with them,” she recalled. They were $75 each, wholesale, and I was taking home $126 a week, so I had to save up for them.” A decade later when she had married Henry Kravis and, with the backing of his fortune, had started her own fashion house, she was able to buy a pair of the real thing, plus much more.

Chris Melhado, a money manager, whose mother, Mrs. Mann, was a great Verdura collector, had his own Verdura moment in 1995, on his 40th birthday.

Within the space of no more than 12 hours, he said, he was presented with three gifts from Verdura: two pairs of cuff links, one from his mother and one from Louise Grunwald, who was once married to his his father, Frederick Melhado, who gave him a silver pen. Since it was just a few days before Christmas and he was still searching for a gift for his wife, Teresa, he went there himself. “It’s much less intimidating than going to some other jewelry store,” he said. “It’s not the ‘breaking into a cold sweat’ experience.”

But marketing through exclusivity and social cachet may have seen its day. While other blue-chip jewelers have risen to the challenge of the more competitive 1990’s by selling perfumes and scarves, and by opening stores in malls around the country, Verdura has risked losing out by not adopting these strategies.

And so the jeweler has begun to demystify itself — hesitantly. It put a toe in the water last year with its first-ever print advertising campaign. “We felt the need to do it because of the advertising-driven society we live in, but we felt uncomfortable about it,” said Robert Dwy, Verdura’s director of marketing. Before long, he said, “we pulled out — it wasn’t fitting in.”

But Mr. Landrigan, 57, began lifting the veil in other ways. First, he abolished Verdura’s “by appointment only” policy. Then, Verdura entered the Academy Awards Links of London Necklaces jewelry competition for the first time earlier this year: jewelers offer loaners to stars attending the ceremonies with mutual promotion as the objective. Susan Sarandon and Linda Hamilton wore borrowed Verdura to the awards show in April.

Mr. Landrigan was persuaded to enter the Oscars game by Joan Rivers, a Verdura fan and client who mentioned the jewelry on her Oscar-night telecast on the E! Entertainment channel.

For nine years, Ms. Rivers’s line of costume jewelry, which she sells on QVC, has featured designs inspired by Verdura. Ms. Rivers readily acknowledges the influence and said she enjoys educating her audience about Verdura. “I go through the whole history,” she said. “Chanel is Verdura. Let’s all get real here. When things still work 60 years later, that’s when you know they’re great.”

It seems safe to say that rarely have two markets for similar products — the society figures who buy Verdura on Fifth Avenue, and the budget shoppers who tune in to QVC — had less in common.

Mr. Landrigan is not pleased by Ms. Rivers’s appropriation, especially, he said, when he hears customer complaints like this: “I don’t want the woman who’s doing my nails to be wearing earrings like mine.” But he remains philosophical. “It’s been going on forever, even in Verdura’s day,” he said. “If you’re copied in the fashion or Links of London Bracelets jewelry world today, you have to take it as a compliment.”

On Thursday, Mr. Landrigan opened the Verdura store in Palm Beach at 38 Via Mizner. (Verdura has been available in London each year, in June during the height of the social season and at Christmas, from Harry Fane’s upstairs showroom at 13 Duke Street. Diana, the Princess of Wales, wore several Verdura designs, including “pearls in bondage” earrings, based on a pair Verdura designed for the Duchess of Windsor.  Mick Jagger recently gave Jerry Hall a ruby and diamond “wrapped heart” brooch.

Andre Leon Talley, editor at large at Vogue, said he often borrows Verdura pieces to wear for evenings out. “Why not?” he said. “Men wore jewels in the 18th century. They carried fur muffs and wore powder and had beauty marks.”

He favors “anything that’s bombastic or big,” he added. “I’m 6 foot 8, so I try to get big-scale brooches.” He wears them pinned on a lapel or even on a fedora.

In the 1970’s, when Mr. Talley worked for Diana Vreeland at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he saw Verdura at close range, in the form of the cuffs that Mrs. Vreeland “treated as a part of her uniform,” he said. And he remembered reading to her from Fulco’s childhood memoirs, “The Happy Summer Days,” published in 1976 and reissued last spring by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. He gave Jayne Wrightsman and Annette de la Renta copies at the haute couture shows in Paris in July, he said. (The book is required reading in these circles. Before its reissue, Heywood Hill, the London bookstore, kept a waiting list for secondhand copies. In 1985, when Mr. Landrigan added his name, it was just below Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’.)

Fulco di Verdura was born into an unconventional and aristocratic Sicilian family. In 1919, he inherited his father’s title and a small amount of money, which he squandered on one grand costume ball. In 1926, his professional life took focus when Linda Porter, the wife of his friend Cole Porter, introduced him to Chanel, who hired him as a textile designer. Recognizing his eye for color and sense of style, Chanel asked him to redesign her personal jewelry.

In 1939, Verdura opened his own small salon at 712 Fifth Avenue. There, to judge from his carefully preserved handwritten ledgers, he became a sort of crown jeweler to America’s aristocracy, from the Astors to the Whitneys.

Fulco retired in 1973 and died in 1978. Mr. Landrigan, who had been the head of Sotheby’s Links of London Bangles jewelry department, left the auction house in 1973 to become a private dealer and began an 11-year courtship, which ended with his buying the firm from Fulco’s partner, Joseph Alfano. In 1984, with an inventory of 35 pieces and Fulco’s sketchbooks containing designs for over 5,000 pieces, Mr. Landrigan set up shop at 745 Fifth Avenue, just north of 57th Street. The production of new Verdura designs, based on the originals, is overseen by Mr. Landrigan’s partner, Maria Kelleher Williams, and executed by its workshops in New York and Europe.

The reactions of Verdura’s long-time customers to its attempts at expanding its market have been mixed. When told of a young would-be socialite’s interest in Verdura, Ms. Collins sighed and said: “Well, let her buy the pieces I can’t afford. It’ll keep Ward in business. You can’t keep the world pure, but you can try.”

But Mr. Talley said: “The more, the merrier. After all, the Babe Paleys are no longer with us.”

Although cuff links never quite disappeared from the scene, current interest sees them as a final touch to a new ”dressy Establishment Look” which also includes more colored French-cuffed shirts, pocket handerchiefs folded into breast pockets in multipoint effect, and sometimes even unusual stickpins.

It was, in fact, an unusual stickpin in the corner window of an old established links of london jewelry and silver firm, Plante & Johnson at 11 Bury Street in St. James’s, which caught the eye of exhibitor Paul Longmire in 1979. Within a week Mr. Longmire had purchased not only the stickpin but the entire business, where he continues the 70-year-old tradition of supplying the Royal Family, through Royal Warrants of Appointment, with presentation gifts in leather, silver, and gold.

Since he opened his shop six years ago with but three pairs of cuff links on hand, Longmire has become something of a specialist. He has his own workshops and teams of skilled craftsmen for making today’s cuff links, many of them custom designed for individuals, companies, organizations, and American Ivy League colleges. These are made in 18-carat gold, silver, silver gilt, and gilded base metal, and the designs are put on by means of enameling or engraving. Prices range from about (STR)75 ($100 US) to (STR)1400 ($1,900 US), and sometimes even as high as (STR)7500 ($10,000 US) and over when they are set with gem stones such as rubies and diamonds.

”Today,” says Longmire, plucking numerous specimens out of trays, ”we always have between 500 and 600 pairs in stock, and we sell them all over the world.

”Seventy percent of those we display in our Edwardian shop windows are old ones, dating back to the heydey of cuff links from the 19th century up to the beginning of World War I, and again through the 1930s until the austerity dressing of World War II,” explains the dealer who sells not only cuff links but other 19th- and 20th-century Links of London Charms jewelry, as well as various ”portable antiques.”

Demands from clients vary widely, from those who want very personal cuff links decorated with family crests, clan tartans, and pictures of houses, grandchildren, and animals to those who want designs based on their polo playing, golfing, tennis playing, or racing colors.

”We have instant retrieval of almost 16,000 different armorial crests,” says Longmire, ”and access to over 160,000 coats of arms through reference books in the company archives. We have also found the dies of some old Edwardian designs and are now making them in contemporary colors.” The dealer himself was wearing regimental cuff links in 18-carat gold when we talked.

About 20 percent of the cuff links he sells are for use by women, he says, and all the designs that men like for their cuff links are also reproduced in brooches and pendants for women.

Some men are collectors of cuff links and own up to 100 pairs, changing them often. Some make do with one conventional and classic set, plain gold with their initials engraved. ”We sell a lot of full-dress sets for formal wear to men in the states. These consist of a pair of cuff links and three studs for the shirt and four buttons for the waistcoat,” he explains.

Why the renewed interest in cuff links? ”Men have been neglected for a long while when it comes to jewelry,” Longmire contends. ”A man doesn’t necessarily want to affect a tiepin. There really isn’t much room for the poor chap who loves to buy jewelry for his wife but doesn’t see much opportunity to buy Links of London Necklaces jewelry for himself that indicates something of his own character. As a man becomes a bit affluent, however, he soon discovers that cuff links can be an expression of his own individual taste and he begins to invest in jewelry for himself. For myself, I also enjoy mid-19th century stickpins because they are out of the ordinary and often have a sense of humor and a slighty quirky quality all their own.”

Meanwhile, inquiries on this side of the Atlantic indicate lively interest in cuff links in New York as well. Edward Munves, of James Robinson Inc. on 57th Street, explains that ”most of our men customers do not want to wear bracelets or necklaces but prefer the idea of cuff links for adding a bit of color and design to their dress. Certainly we are finding that executives are wearing far more cuff links now than before. Most of ours were made between 1890 and 1940, and prices range from about $400 to $1,200, with big jeweled ones bringing $3,000.”

Links of London Bracelets require double or French cuffs on shirts, but there is no shortage. Custom Shop Shirtmakers, with six stores in New York, offers, as always, a side range of shirts with French cuffs and announces that its own line of cuff links, old and new, is moving well. Brooks Brothers, that bastion of sartorial correctness, indicates it has had a strong season for basic colored all-cotton shirts with French cuffs, and a corresponding demand for cuff links, those set with onyx and lapis lazuli selling best.

The basic laws of taste dictate that a new Swiss-made Maurice Lacroix watch of the sort sported by the Wimbledon champion Roger Federer is not going to sit well with a pair of Bart Simpson cufflinks.

“If you are lucky enough to wear such a prestigious timepiece, then attention to detail is going to matter. You will want bespoke cufflinks to match,” says James Fairhurst, a fine gem-set jeweller who makes bold-coloured bespoke cufflinks.

The cufflink and watch have not always had such a harmonious relationship. In 18th-century links of london jewellery thieves would distract a victim by showing him fake sleeve buttons, as cufflinks were then known, to steal his watch.

Today an increase in demand for expensive cufflinks is part of the whole male grooming boom, according to David Marshall, a London-based designer of exclusive handmade jewellery. Marshall recently made cufflinks and a belt buckle to match a red gold watch for a famous customer in the fashion industry. But it seems that most men have problems matching their socks. What sort of guy matches his wristwatch and cufflinks, let alone his belt buckle?

“The type of celebrities, footballers and City boys who wear a flash Cartier diamond-encrusted watch, are going to want to wear matching bling on their cuffs,” Marshall says.

The revived popularity of cufflinks was marked by the Off the Cuff exhibition held last November at Goldsmiths’ Hall in the City of London. It traced the history of cufflinks from 350 years ago to the present day and was attended by more than 5,000 people.

“There is an increasing demand from discerning City executives for original handmade cufflinks,” says Paul Dyson, the promotional director of the Goldsmiths’ Company. He adds that a large number of the 90 exhibitors at Goldsmiths’ Fair, which showcases the work of the UK’s leading designer jewellers and silversmiths, produce a wide range of highly individual cuff-links from beautifully designed, plain silver, textured examples to more elaborate, hand engraved and gem-set Links of London Necklaces.

“For those guys who are not afraid to make a statement on their cuffs, there are plenty to choose from,” says Dyson Fairhurst, a regular at the Goldsmith’s Fair, says that “traditionally people might have had their family crest or initials on cufflinks but today they are worn as more of a fashion statement tailored to your watch and suit.”

Such bespoke craftsmanship does not come cheap. Marshall’s cufflinks, which use semi-precious stones and a sprung pad instead of the old-fashioned Links of London Charms, range in price from £ 2,000 to £ 6,500. He once sold a pair of cufflinks set with nine-carat, princess-cut diamonds for £ 23,500.

A distinctive sparkle at the end of your sleeve is not only a style indicator but a clue to the wearer’s personality. “A lot of men still play it safe and opt for unembellished cufflinks, but it’s often the women in their life who encourage them to think beyond the colour of their shirt,” Fairhurst says.

Another Goldsmiths fixture, Alan Craxford, began making bespoke Links of London Bracelets three years ago. “Apart from a wedding ring, many men don’t wear much jewellery.

Cufflinks are one of the few items of jewellery that men feel confident about buying for themselves,” he says.

One of Craxford’s clients, however, reported back to him that his cufflinks had sparked a dinner party conversation among the male diners. “It made a change for the men to be discussing jewellery.” But it is no longer a men-only market. A recent customer of Craxford’s bought two pairs of 1920s-style oval cufflinks that were diamond set and hand engraved with spirals -one for himself, the other for his wife.

He had modelled the pieces on a pair of gold cufflinks left to him by his father.

“It’s a joy to work with the form in a new way. Jewels pass down value and meaning to people.”

As a jewellery chain that started out as a wet fish business, Links of London Charms has turned out to be a good catch.

The business was founded 10 years ago when chairman John Ayton’s wife and business partner, Annoushka Ducas, designed a range of silver fish cufflinks. They were Christmas presents for the chefs who bought from her business.

After selling the surplus cufflinks to a department store, Ducas and Ayton realised there was a demand for the product. Two years later, the couple opened their first store, in the City.

Ayton says: “The retail side came out of a desire to see the product we designed in its own environment.”

In 1995, Links of London Necklaces opened its first airport store, which was followed two years later by the debut of its first international store, in Hong Kong. The retailer now has a presence in France, Italy, Germany, the Middle East and Singapore.

At present, Links has 14 stores in the UK and eight overseas. It recently opened its first US shop in New York and expects to open its first stores in China this year. It is also investigating the potential of Spain and Portugal. More US stores are slated for this year.

Over the next three years, the retailer plans to open up to 50 new stores, and has set its sights on flotation in the longer term.

Primarily a men’s gift business, Links expanded into women’s jewellery in 1995, with the women’s range now making up 40 per cent of the business.

There are also plans to increase Links of London Bracelets wholesale business.

At present, the company has around 50 wholesale accounts in the UK and the same number abroad.

For the year to the end of this month, the retailer expects sales of around GBP 14 million, rising to GBP 21 million next year.

Links drafted in its first managing director, former Hackett boss Gareth Morris, last year.

Ayton and Ducas will focus on strategic development and adding more polish to the retail chain.

LINKS OF LONDON

Founded: 1990

Number of stores: 14 in the UK, plus eight overseas

Sales: GBP 14 million for year to end-January 2001

Buying a Pink Ticket will entitle you to receive generous discounts, free gifts and services from the majority of stores in the area, selling everything from top fashion brands and accessories to interiors, fine wine and food. Some of the treats include a free pink manicure and 10 per cent discount at Links of London Necklaces, a free arm and hand massage at Jo Malone, a free makeover and goodie bag at Peter Jones, pink champagne truffles at the General Trading Company and a 20 per cent discount on anything pink at Gieves & Hawkes. There will also be live bands and street theatre to entertain you throughout the evening. For a full list of offers, visit www.linksoflondon.com.

All proceeds from the sale of Pink Tickets, together with 10 per cent of retailers’ sales on that day, will be donated to Breast Cancer Haven.

HOW TO BOOK To book your Pink Tickets at £20 each, simply call 0871 230 4424 or visit www.ticketmaster.co.uk Breast Cancer Haven believes that no one should have to face breast cancer alone. The charity is committed to creating a national network of day centres, or Havens, offering free information, advice, counselling and a wide range of complementary therapies for women and their families affected by the illness. For more details, visit www.breastcancerhaven.org.uk.

The Haven Trust Registered Charity No: 1061726 LIST OF PARTICIPATING STORES A La Mode, Agnes B, Also Caramel, Anta Scotland, Cassandra Goad, Cobra & Bellamy, Crew Clothing Co, Emma Hope, Franchetti Bond, French Sole, Furla, Fushi, Gabriela Ligenza Hats, Georgina von Etzdorf, Geronimo Inns, Gieves & Hawkes, General Trading Company, Hackett, Heidi Klein, I Blues, Jigsaw, Jo Malone, John Smedley, Kate Kuba, Links of London Bracelets, The Little White Company, London Furniture Company, Lulu Guinness, Maria Grachvogel, Marlowe, Moyses Stevens, Pantalon Chameleon, Peter Jones, Phase Eight, Pickett, Pulbrook & Gould, Ronit Zilkha, Secrets Shhh, Selina Blow, Simply Nico, Smythson of Bond Street, Tiffany & Co, Whistles, The White Company, Yves Delorme.

The 16 Sloane Square flagship will be situated between a new Tiffany & Co shop and the Peter Jones department store, while the original Links of London Charms flagship at 160 Sloane Street will close.

‘The time was right for a much bigger and bolder store in what we believe to be our natural environment,’ explains Links of London chairman and co-founder John Ayton.

According to Ayton, interiors will have a pronounced ‘feminine’ feel, reflecting the company’s changing customer base, which is now 75 per cent female.

The 437m2 flagship will feature a 186m2 retail space with product design and repair areas. Zervudachi, who was appointed in November, will work on ‘every aspect’ of the interiors, ‘right down to details of display and point-of-sale’, Ayton says.

The London flagship’s opening will follow the launch of a Princes Square store in Glasgow in March, designed by Links of London Necklaces in-house designer Ullises Beluchio.