THE YOUNG AND THE NESTED

By TAMALA M. EDWARDS

Caitlin and Samuel Dowe-Sandes live in New York City's once infamous Hell's Kitchen, just north and west of Times Square, but their tiny one-bedroom apartment is more like a jewel box than a jail. Antique furniture and Persian rugs are complemented by original art on the walls. A vintage yellow icebox opens to reveal liqueurs, whiskeys and port glasses. On top sits the couple's decanter collection. This one is Danish, 1890s; these two are French, 1920s. Duke Ellington's jazz floats from the bedroom, and Sam's latest purchase, a gold jacquard smoking jacket, hangs behind the door. Caitlin, an ad copywriter for Bon Appetit, stirs the polenta, while Sam, who works with a caterer favored by fashion shoots, serves goat cheese on pizza bianca. The two have a dinner party at least three times a month. "Never pasta and red sauce," chides Samuel, who prefers stuffed trout or nicoise salad.

The possessions and the ambiance suggest a couple at prosperous midlife. But Sam and Caitlin have been married just three weeks. They are all of 25. In a society where House & Garden and This Old House are staples, it's not surprising that homemaking is hot. What is startling is that twentysomethings are more and more the converts to and trendsetters of nesting. Weary of kicking up their heels, they have turned to settling in with the same zeal they once gave barhopping.

In an unstable, unloyal, technologically isolating world, it's the solid values, sturdy connections and safe harbors of yesteryear that resonate. Dinner parties are better than dance clubs, and settling down beats swinging free. "I'm amazed at how quickly I went from the bar culture to intimate dinner parties," says Mark Toft, 26, a writer who lives in St. Louis, Mo., with his wife Beth. "Nesting means you get to trade a crazy public space for a place where you can define who you are."

What's happened? For three decades the twentysomething years were marked with arch abandon, each generation extending playtime a little longer. Not so long ago, this was the time for visits to nightclubs, apartments decorated with listing-board bookcases and taped posters, and rendezvous with the one--or the second or the third--who was about to get away. Now, rather suddenly, this generation dreams of Pottery Barn, slipcovered sofas and tuna-noodle surprise. "I read cookbooks," admits Angela Lee, 27, a New York teacher. "And my last five social occasions? I cooked and friends came over."

Pollsters, trend watchers and merchants are convinced that couples are getting married earlier than a few years ago. Bette Kahn, spokeswoman for Crate & Barrel, and Donata Maggipinto, director of food and entertainment for Williams-Sonoma, say the brides being listed on their registries are younger. Carolyn Campbell, owner of Los Angeles' Wedding Library, which serves thousands of brides, says their average age in 1990 was 27; today it's 24. Notes Marci Blum, a New York wedding consultant: "I look around the room and think, 'You should be in high chairs!'"

Ann Clurman, a partner at Yankelovich's MONITOR generational study, compares the new trend to the rumble on the tracks before the train is seen. "It'll take years for the numbers to catch up, but attitudinally, this generation is marrying younger," she says. All this cuts against the image pinned on Gen Xers at the start of the decade. The idea was that they were aimless and depressed, but the reality seems to be that they are overprogrammed and extraordinarily stressed. They are the first generation to be scheduled from their earliest play dates; to view school, even grade school, as a ruthless competition; to enter the work force unsure of where they're going but clear enough that the destination is the top. And now they're rebelling in their own way--not in the streets but back to hearth and home.

The early nesters seem to be reacting in part to what they perceive as miscues by their older siblings, not to mention their parents, who attacked life with a single-minded career focus and a no-ties-to-hold-you-back attitude--and ended up with no ties at all. Growing up, Angela Lee had her father's rule of thumb: if a doctor, cure cancer; if a businesswoman, be CEO of a FORTUNE 500 company. After her Harvard graduation, Lee went to Oxford and then was scooped up by McKinsey & Co., the topflight consulting firm. She loved the wardrobe, the dinners at Nobu. But when she looked up and down the halls, she saw "armies of very lonely people." "The problem is they haven't made any room for intimacy," she says. Meanwhile her sister, an infertility specialist, gasped at the number of anguished 40-year-old women coming in, trying to have children. "That was the life I had embarked upon. But then I began to wonder: You hit your target zone with your personal trainer, have great suits and eat a lot of sushi. What does it mean?"

Two months ago, Lee quit, and in the space of 24 hours went from corporate hotshot to math teacher on Manhattan's Lower East Side. She and her fiance Jason, 25, nest through weekends; a hot outing is likely to be a visit to a coffee bar with friends. This whole nesting thing, she says, "is about a simple question--What do I do that would make me happy?" She pauses as the sounds of ringing bells and laughing children rise. "I'm choosing a destination, and maybe it means I'll have fewer choices," she says. "But I think--I know--I'll be happier when I get there."

Sharing in that happiness is the home industry. Until the past two years, Williams-Sonoma, an upscale culinary store, thought its average customer was 42. But then it noticed more and more young people buying big-ticket items like turkey roasting pans instead of the expected disposable aluminum pans. The company introduced cookbooks on CD-ROM, anticipating moderate sales to middle-aged gourmands, but the discs blew out of the stores, toted by twentysomethings. Says the company's Maggipinto: "Now 26 is our emerging market, and as of this year we have begun seriously focusing on being on trend," she says. "On trend" has meant offering its best-selling stainless-steel toaster in Gen X-friendly pastels like green, yellow and orange, along with easy step-by-step products like gourmet cake mixes.

Even outfits like Pottery Barn and Crate & Barrel, which have always had younger crowds, have had to adjust. "We used to always say our average age was 25 to 55," says Kahn. "We don't say that anymore. We feel the customer is getting younger."

A generation that watched its parents divorce and then saw technology increasingly elevate E-mail and faxes over the human touch finds itself yearning for the days not of its parents but of its grandparents. "You get constant change coming at you, and the reaction is to head to the things of comfort--family, religion, marriage, kids," says Chip Walker, director of global marketing for Phillips, the electronics maker.

Bradford Faye, a senior vice president at Roper, the polling firm, says he and others are advising clients that the way to get a slice of the $120 billion spent by twentysomethings is to stress tradition as much as individualism. Thus a company like Dewar's draws new drinkers to its Scotch by marketing it not as as an alternative choice but as your father's drink, a classic hallmark of growing up. "The value of the good old days has gone up a lot," he says.

The trend can baffle parents who have fought their own divorce wars. When America Ehnot, 25, a Seattle marketing rep, told her father she was getting married next spring, he blankly looked back and forth between her and her fiance. "Why?" he asked. "You've already got six marriages between you." But as kids took the shrapnel from their parents' breakups, the result was not wariness of marriage but a desire to try harder and do better. "And we don't want to start in our mid-30s," says Los Angeles bank manager Shannon Kowalewski, 27. "They saw their parents go through all these possessions--new lovers, new material goods, new sensory experiences--and saw that didn't do it," says cultural critic and author Naomi Wolf. "They learned from those mistakes and have different values and desires from their parents'."

Even those not on trend speak to how the culture and its expectations have flipped. Anne Stringfield, 24, works at a New York City publishing house, lives in the trendy East Village and moonlights on the side, typing for Nobel laureate Derek Walcott. But as she sits in a New York restaurant, dressed in black and adjusting her tortoiseshell glasses, she says she often feels unchic around her friends. She is single, while most of them are in serious relationships. Her apartment is in the expected dishabille, while their cupboards are filled with martini and highball glasses, their furniture is well selected, and their culinary skills are often on display. "They have all the accoutrements of domesticity," says Stringfield, who spent half an hour at a recent soiree talking about piecrusts, her one hook into what she sees as the prevailing culture. "We kind of joke about how middle-aged we've become."

--With reporting by Jacqueline Savaiano/Los Angeles

With reporting by JACQUELINE SAVAIANO/LOS ANGELES