You wear the collar out at night, perhaps to a bar full of people with whom you might have something in common -- if only you had an excuse to meet. You are sitting there, sipping your cocktail, when across the room you spy him: interesting face, engrossed in conversation, funky clothes. Normally, you'd try to screw up the guts to go meet him, but you've been released from that loathsome task: You've noticed the sweater he's wearing. It's a simple, brown, zip-front knit top with a high ribbed neck. On his sleeve is a discreet label with the secret message: skim.com, S00 258.

So instead of trying to make conversation, you dodge the rejection bullet and leave the bar. When you get home -- fully free of the humiliating fallout of face-to-face communication -- you get online (wearing your stained pajamas with the hole in the crotch, perhaps) and visit the skim.com Web site. You plug his number into an e-mail form and write: "I saw you at the bar tonight. I was the girl in the pink collar. Can I talk you into coffee?"

If fashion is communication, a codified sort of symbolic expression incorporating a certain amount of ancient ritual, then the Swiss designers at skim.com have distilled it into its purest form. The same old mating game -- I want you, you want me: What's your number? -- has been made so simple, so safe, so Orwellian, that now you don't even need to ask. Instead, the number is right there, front and center on your sleeve -- and only recognizable and of use to those who are plugged in enough to recognize it (and desperate enough, perhaps, to wear one themselves).

Skim.com markets personalized I.D.-tagged clothing: jackets and shirts and bags and skirts, each one individually marked with a unique number and the skim.com URL. Each I.D. number, in turn, correlates to a skim.com e-mail address. If someone sends a note to your I.D. number, it will be forwarded to your skim.com e-mail address. Your clothes are, essentially, telling everyone how to get in touch with you without revealing exactly who you are. As skim.com co-founder Johne Eisenhut describes the concept behind the clothing: "The brands and individualized products you choose communicate something about you, your style and aesthetics, to the outside world. We wanted to find a way to make that communication two-way."

The company, which launched last winter, has already produced three collections of utilitarian street fashion. The look is a cross between skater wear, Prada Sport and retro chic, bearing probably the closest resemblance to Mandarina Duck or Levi's Engineered Red or Diesel. Think puffy jackets, skirts that unzip and convert from a long cargo skirt to a mini, trim baseball tees and hooded sweatshirts in graceful cuts and smart fabrics: all street functional, but with high-fashion styling. The company is based in Switzerland, and was conceived by the founders of Freitag, who made a small ruckus in the 1990s with their one-of-a-kind rubberized bike messenger bags.

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