PEOPLE

By Belinda Luscombe

AND THE TONI AWARD FOR FASHION...

TONI BRAXTON may not have been born with a lanky model's frame, but she's never been shy about showing off all of her 5 ft. 2 in. "Midriffs," the Grammy-winning singer once explained helpfully, "make me look taller." She found in designer Marc Bouwer the perfect architect of her no-foundation-garments- necessary look. Bouwer describes his style as "athletic glamour" and uses lots of Lycra and other stretch fabrics in his evening wear. At this week's fashion shows in New York, the relatively unknown Bouwer has scored a coup by persuading the singer, whom he has been dressing ever since he saw her on TV wearing a frock of his that she bought in a store (horrors!), to strut the catwalk for him. "My clothes are not for wallflowers," Bouwer says. "They're for confident, athletic women who enjoy being seen." In return for being all that, Braxton will get to keep her dress.

SEEN & HEARD

Custody battles are never cute, but when the progeny in question have lucrative careers, they can be all the uglier. So it's a relief on all sides that Christopher ("Kit") Culkin conceded custody of his son MACAULAY CULKIN and his siblings to their mother, Patricia Brentrup, just before a nasty trial was to have begun. The fight for control of the children and their careers has nearly bankrupted the former couple, although Mac still has most of his millions.

Golf sometimes seems like an old guy's game, but that doesn't mean young women can't play it. Natalie Gulbis, 14, made her LPGA debut in the Longs Drug Challenge last week. She's not the youngest woman ever to play in an LPGA event. That was Beverly Klass, 9, who won $31 in 1965. Neither girl did well; Gulbis was out of the tournament after two rounds. But Klass has this advice: find a good teacher, stay fearless and enjoy it.

A SENSE OF WHERE HE IS NOW

In jokey new commercials for ESPN, BILL BRADLEY tries to convince some skeptical interviewers that he has the qualifications to work for the cable channel. But they simply shake their heads dubiously at his Rhodes Scholarship, Olympic gold medal, two N.B.A. championships, three books and 18 years as a U.S. Senator. Over at CBS, they're apparently not so picky. Bradley has been named a contributor for the news division. It's something of a backdoor move for the man whose first job in the 1960s was as a radio reporter for CBS in St. Louis, Missouri, and who sent back reports while he was at Oxford. "I'm going to focus on the changing circumstances in this country and the situations that bring out the best in people," says Bradley. "I'm definitely not going to be talking about what went on in Washington this week." Nothing about Washington? "Well," he relents, "maybe about the cherry blossoms."

MY OTHER MOM'S AN ICON

To have loved and lost has its merits, especially for poetic types like JONI MITCHELL, but to have lost and found is still sweeter. Mitchell has been reunited with a daughter she put up for adoption in Toronto in 1965, when Mitchell was just 21 and not yet a folk-singing star. She went public about her desire to meet her daughter, now 32, last December, but because of Ontario's strict adoption-secrecy laws, she had a hard time finding the young woman. "Apparently her daughter was looking for her too, so there's sort of a fairy-tale ending," Mitchell's father Bill Anderson told the Associated Press. "Joni's as happy as you can imagine anyone being in these circumstances," says Mitchell's publicist. The Grammy Award-winning singer and her daughter have already bonded musically: they went to a concert together.