What really stood out, though, was the label: Tupperware.

Tupperware Corp., known through the generations for selling plastic food-storage containers through staid living-room ''parties,'' is trying to become cool. In an effort to generate buzz, the 59-year-old company is throwing high-profile Tupperware parties with stars like Naomi Watts and actor-rapper Ice-T on the guest lists. At this season's Fashion Week, the company managed to get its wares in a gift bag for celebrities, along with such coveted items as a $600 faux crocodile Dooney & Bourke.

Over the past year, the company has been quietly rolling out edgier products. Consumers now can buy a Tupperware ice-cream scoop with a stainless-steel head, a $25 Lil' Chopper, which chops small amounts of food, and the Heartbreaker, a utensil that cracks shells and removes pits. In November, it plans to start selling wine glasses made of its trademark plastic.

The classic Tupperware storage containers also are getting a makeover, turning up in colors like amethyst and ruby and in accordion-like versions that can be flattened out for easy storage.

While the plastic headbands were made just for Cynthia Rowley's show, the designer plans to sell the Tupperware shoes she designed with her clothing collection next spring. (''I'd love to call them 'Tupperwear!' " she says.) The shoes will likely retail for at least $300.

The revamp is aimed at resuscitating Tupperware's U.S. division after two years of disappointing sales. Tupperware reported a loss in North America of $31 million last year, after reporting a $22.4 million loss in 2003. (Its Europe, Asia and Latin America divisions - which account for 75 percent of its total business - have posted profits every year since 2001.)

Tupperware's troubles stem in part from a sales experiment it conducted in the fall of 2001 when it started placing its products in some Target stores. The idea was to supplement its signature Tupperware parties and become as accessible to customers as rivals such as Newell Rubbermaid Inc. and Clorox Co.'s GladWare, both of which are easily found in grocery and housewares stores.

The Tupperware products sold well in Target stores. But as a result, party attendance took a nose dive and the company's sales representatives, who had long driven sales at the company's famed parties, began leaving in droves. Its active sales force dropped 41 percent in just two years, going from 23,103 in 2002 to 13,593 in 2004. So in September 2003, the company yanked its products off Target's shelves.

Couple this with the fact that the food-storage container market has taken a hit in recent years. Between 2001 and 2003, the food-storage market has suffered average sales losses of about 4.2 percent as people cook less, according to a 2004 report by research firm Mintel International Group Ltd.

At the same time, competitors have introduced a crop of innovative food-storage products. Clorox's GladWare, for example, has partnered with appliance maker Hamilton Beach to create a Change-a-Bowl Slicer/Shredder, a $39.99 food processor-like gadget that works with interchangeable disposable food-storage containers. The appliance will arrive in stores next month. Rubbermaid is offering a Stain Shield line of clear food-storage containers that have been treated so they will be resistant to red staining from foods like tomato sauce.

Consumers also have gravitated toward disposable food-storage containers made by GladWare and other competitors instead of Tupperware, which is intended to be reused - and therefore washed and stored. Katie Doggendorf of New York City says she prefers using GladWare pieces for her leftovers because she often leaves the containers at work. If she doesn't want to clean it, sometimes she will ''just throw it out,'' she says.

To attract people like Doggendorf, who is 25, Tupperware ordered up an image overhaul. ''I watched what happened with Cadillac,'' says Rick Goings, CEO of the Orlando, Fla.-based company. ''They came out with the Escalade and rap stars and sports celebrities started driving it, and all of a sudden it became the car of choice for women in Greenwich, Conn. . . . I said, 'We've got to start hitting it with the fringe, hip culture.' "

Earlier this year, Tupperware struck a deal with the celebrity magazine Life & Style Weekly to sponsor its ''Best party of the week'' page, which features a sizable ad (with an 800 number to call about hosting ''your own hot Tupperware party'') next to pictures of people like Sarah Jessica Parker and Carmen Electra. Then this summer, Jono Productions Inc., which puts together the Fashion Week gift bag, approached Tupperware about participating. And the company started encouraging sales reps to think outside the box when it came to throwing parties, trying formats like a cocktail soiree.

It is unclear whether all this will work for a company with as unglamorous an image as Tupperware. But there has been some payoff so far. In April, Life & Style ran an item on its parties page on ''Law & Order: SVU'' stars Ice-T and Mariska Hargitay attending a Tupperware party.