The dress is a cheap cotton schmatte you can pick up at any Woolworth's.

The word is schmatte, from the Yiddish meaning rag.

In a native Russian schmatte?

His father, Gerald, is in the schmatte business and owns a menswear shop in Piccadilly.

Flinders Lane, heart of the schmatte business - Jews in the Australian garment trade.

Of the building he is now converting, Mr. Walentas recalls: "When we bought it, it was needle trade - schmatte manufacturing."

This article is based on unique primary research undertaken for an exhibition in 2001 at the Jewish Museum of Australia: Schmatte Business - Jews in the Garment Trade.

Imagine my surprise when I read in my column that Gordone's characters tended to be "schmata," by which I assume she meant "schmatte," i.e., ragged old garments.

But now that the baseball strike has inspired owners like George to use schmatte strikebreakers on the field, WABC says it anticipates being damaged because of loss of advertising dollars.

For a bracing look at hypocrisy in cyberspace, take a look at the claims these schmatte peddlers make on their Web sites: XP Apparel "helps people of all ages meet Christ's challenge by providing clothing that helps them share their faith."

Dressed in a typically funky schmatte, this one designed by Dorothy Wasserman, Ms. Goldberg also tapped and talked of her childhood and her earliest "basement choreography," of her college years in the rebellious 1960's, and of interviewing Ginger Rogers.