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The manager at the Chanel boutique on Madison Avenue, when asked for handbags with logos on them, glanced around the shop for the first time in decades almost totally bare of big initials and swung open a floor to ceiling mirrored cabinet. There, hidden from the customers who did not ask for them, were row upon row of purses emblazoned with CCs at least 6 inches tall.

"Logos are a little soft this year," he explained.

Gucci. Fendi. Ferragamo. Chanel. Prada. Throughout the 1990's, designers kept turning up the volume on their initials, putting their company logos the CCs of Chanel, the G's of Gucci, the much imitated LVs of Louis Vuitton on a mind boggling array of new products: belts, ties, wallets, golf shirts, tennis shoes and mink lined fedoras.

Now the logos have become scarce. The row of shop windows along the Gold Coast of Madison Avenue, from 60th to 80th streets, is a logo free zone. There is not a single initial on the leather shoes and boots on the hushed floors of Gucci's on Fifth Avenue.

Early this fake designer bags month, only one aaa replica designer handbags of the 16 bags in the window of Chanel had CCs, and that one was understated: beige appliqued on beige. At Fendi, luggage with logos was on sale: "Seventy percent off," whispered a saleswoman.

There are still Americans who are in love with logos, but many, it seems, have grown weary of the very brand names they coveted in Fake Louis Vuitton Replica Bags the 1990s.

Designers, department store executives and luxury goods manufacturers say the reasons for the decline in logos range from a backlash against conspicuous consumption to a return to individuality in fashion, from the erosion of brand names through cheap knockoffs to, as some suggest, a reaction to 9/11. Morgan Chase. This fall, the percentage has dropped to 10 percent to 15 percent, said Kal Ruttenstein, the senior vice president for fashion at Bloomingdale's. For Chanel, he said, the percentages are similar: "30 to 40 percent before, maybe 10 to 15 percent now."

At Barneys of New York, one whole window is devoted to Prada. But those purses are devoid of the metal triangle with the Prada name, which during the last five years had seemed to grow bigger and bigger, like Pinocchio's nose.

To Simon Doonan, the creative director at Barneys, logos are Designer Louis Vuitton Replica Handbags on the way out. "They did it to death and they're smart enough to recognize it," he said. "The customers OD'd on it. It no longer has resonance."

Ruttenstein said the trend was filtering down to more mass market brands like Ralph Lauren and 1:1 replica handbags Tommy Hilfiger.

Company executives gave many reasons for the newly missing CCs and G's, F's and LVs.

1:1 replica handbags Jean Marc Gallot, president of Ferragamo's United States division, speaking from a windswept beach in the South of France, tied the change to "the tragic events of Sept. 11." That note was echoed by other executives who said dropping their voices that the world was a more sober place now, and that they had decided to go back to their roots by promoting only their companies' high quality, unobscured by tacky symbols.

To Juliet B. "It's tied to a larger resistance to branding strategies and connected to individuality, to rejecting the corporate definition of who you are," she replica louis vuitton said.

Individuality, exemplified by one of a kind vintage clothes, is in vogue now, especially for teenagers. "They don't want to look like anybody else, and they don't want to have somebody's else's name plastered on their things," said Dana Eisman Cohen, a retail analyst with Banc of America Securities.

And besides, there are fewer tourists to buy the logoed merchandise.

New York's department stores and designer boutiques high quality designer replica handbags wholesale are "pretty much under the weather these days," Cohen said, "especially at the high end."

Bergdorf Goodman, the Fifth Avenue grande dame, this season is featuring Lambertson Truex, a luxury line of handbags with only a thumb tack size button with intertwined initials. And three weeks ago, Barneys introduced the E. Goyard line of luggage. As a selling point, a saleswoman stressed that the hand stenciled "E. Goyard" was almost unreadable. (The lack of a logo doesn't make the items cheaper: a Goyard dog collar retails for $245.)

Even Coach, which came out with its heavily logoed signature fabric just last year, will introduce a more subtle Discount Replica Louis Vuitton Bags line in late January, said Reed Krakoff, the president and creative director. The new fabric has C's "so small they read like checks," he said.

This is not the first time logos have fallen out of fashion. After they waned in the early 1990s, they came back, led by Tom Ford, the designer at Gucci, who kept the critics happy by making philosophical statements about the irony of fashion, and kept the consumers delighted by offering goods with ever more blaring advertisements for the companies. Now, even the irony has lost its bite.

Executives, in interviews, kept using the words "subtle," "quiet" and "anonymous."

Barneys is featuring a plain bag by Balenciaga on the cover of its fall catalog. "It looks like a feed bag," said Doonan. "An anonymous suede feedbag."

Many sellers of luxury goods want to have it both ways: to be more discreet for the fashionable while still clinging to the logo lovers.

"Trust me when I tell you, everybody still wants a logo," said Barbara Cirkva, an executive vice president at Chanel.

At Chanel, logos are smaller, even when replica louis vuitton handbags they sit on the toes of some ballerina pumps. At Hermes, there are fewer H's, and now they are disguised, like the "Ninas" in a Hirschfeld cartoon.

"Where is the H?" asked Francesca Leoni, a spokeswoman for the company, brandishing the new Drag Bag, a soft leather satchel the color of fudge and the texture of high quality designer replica handbags silk.

"They're at the base of the handle," she announced triumphantly, pointing to a piece of metal where the shoulder strap met the bag. "And here," she said, "imprinted in the ribbing on the front of this miniature orange crocodile bag!" (Price of the orange croc: $13,000.)

If this year's high fashion signatures are part of a find the logo puzzle, the tourists on Canal Street are not high quality replica handbags china playing. There, the old rules apply logos, the bigger the better.