Less is more has usually been Brigitte Bardot's attitude toward threads. Last year BB lent her ideas--and signature --to a collection of short shorts, dresses, blouses and shirts created by her friend, Designer Arlette Nastat. Their collection this year tends to be ampler as Bardot demonstrated by modeling one of her striped angora sweater-tunics and gold lame thigh boots. She then retired to the seclusion of her St.-Tropez villa to celebrate her 43rd birthday.

When his friend Jimmy Carter was running for the presidency, Andrew Young had a gripe shared by many other voters: he couldn't figure out the candidate's stand on foreign policy. But then Young made up his mind that Carter's instincts must be right "if Jimmy's momma went to India in the Peace Corps." "Miss Lillian raised her boy Jimmy in a spirit of idealism mixed with the spirit of tough determination," said the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations last week in a speech before the Synagogue Council of America. The occasion was the presentation of the council's peace prize to Miss Lillian, 79. Past recipients: John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Earl Warren and Nelson Rockefeller. Why does Jimmy's mom rate such an award? Besides her efforts in India, Miss Lillian, explained Young, has lived a "constant struggle for peace amid the poverty, tension and differences in south Georgia." Well, shrugged his white-haired listener, it all came easy. Drawled Miss Lillian: "I was born loving everybody."

For a princess, Queen Elizabeth's sister Margaret has never had much luck with fairy-tale romances. Duty-bound to give up her true love, Group Captain Peter Townsend, she settled for Antony Armstrong-Jones, and is now legally separated. According to Margaret's friends, quoted in the British weekly Woman's Own, the match with Jones came about because Margaret received a letter from Townsend announcing his plans to marry another. "That evening, I became engaged to Tony. It was no coincidence," Margaret told her friends. She has also revealed her doubts about remarrying: "It would probably be too much of a bore." Her steady date for theatergoing and vacations is Roderic ("Roddy") Llewellyn, a landscape gardener 18 years her junior who has lately removed his single earring and cut his shaggy locks. He will not, however, accompany Margaret on her official visit to the U.S. this month.

A brass band struck up Waltzing Matilda, and the Odd Couple strode to the dais in Melbourne's Exhibition Building. Two former Australian Prime Ministers of opposing parties, Sir John Gorton (Liberal, 1968-71) and Gough Whitlam (Labor, 1972-75), were on the same political platform.

The setting was a conference on constitutional reform, and Gorton, 66, kicked off the proceedings by quoting Omar Khayyam: "Would we not shatter it to bits--and then remold it nearer to the Heart's desire!"

Whitlam, 61, applauded politely, then rose to the podium for a speech that was all the more earnest since he had been unceremoniously sacked two years ago by the Queen's governor-general. "From this historic convention," he proclaimed, would emerge "a truly democratic constitution and a truly independent Australia." Since that is what Gorton wanted too, he found his onetime adversary Whitlam "a reasonable sort of bloke."

When he isn't sketching fantasy fashions, Designer Yves Saint Laurent, 41, does a bit of writing. His work in process is part introspection and part observation of his famous friends. No publication date for the book has yet been settled on, but an excerpt has just appeared in Le Monde. The subject: Maria Callas. The singer, wrote Saint Laurent eight months before her death, appeared to him as a "diva among divas, empress, queen, goddess, witch, hard-working magician, and above all, divine." He lamented that her voice had evaporated, but noted that "it has fled this impure, debasing, putrified air which was going to smother it, petrify it, degrade it!" To Yves, Maria was "a great solitary eagle whose outspread wings have hidden forever those who will outlive her."

As an aspiring singer at Manhattan's gay Continental Baths, Bette Midler never minded the towel-clad clientele. But Bette is fussier these days. When Dustin Hoffman arrived in blue jeans to tape NBC's Dec. 7 show, The Bette Midler Special, the Divine Miss M demanded that he spruce up. "O.K., it's time for you to change into your tux," she announced, then proceeded to yank off his jeans. Despite their disagreement on attire, Bette and friend managed to collaborate on a song. Dustin wrote the music, and Bette the lyrics. Like, for example: "I'm glad you called. I got nothing to do. Come on, let's shoot the breeze."

The man with the glasses is not standing before an abstract painting. Scientist Robert Jastrow is posing in front of a computer mosaic of the sun's corona made from a NASA photograph. As founder and director of NASA'S Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Jastrow, 52, has long been studying the solar system and has written a new book about it, Until the Sun Dies (Norton; $8.95). "It tells the story of the creation, based on scientific evidence," says Jastrow. "It shows us that we are humble, junior citizens on the block in a large world. The true life of the cosmos is far beyond our comprehension." But 6 billion years from now, Jastrow says, the sun will die and man by that time will have evolved into a different form that is no longer human. What will it look like? That, says Jastrow, is grist for his next book.

An old pro at assessing political currents, Washington Governor Dixy Lee Ray also knows about the ripples on a river. For her third vacation day since taking office last January (the first two were spent fishing), the outdoors-loving Governor paddled down the Yakima River. The party of 27, including Ray's gray poodle Jacques, required four large rafts and enjoyed a luncheon of barbecued beef, avocados stuffed with shrimp, and champagne. "It was really pleasant, floating past basalt cliffs covered with lichen and watching the swallows," says Ray, 63. But near the end, the Governor got the old competitive urge and suggested a race. "We put our minds and paddles to work," says Ray. "And we beat the others to the finish line."

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