We’re such snoops. We hid out at...

We’re such snoops. We hid out at Aida Grey’s Wilshire Boulevard beauty place about a week ago and spotted none other than Nancy Reagan. We didn’t ask Grey exactly what beautification rites the First Lady underwent because we figured national security might be at stake. But we got gutsier when on another day Jihan Sadat, widow of Anwar Sadat, sashayed in and didn’t leave for three hours. Grey told us that Sadat had a haircut, hair style, a new foundation blended especially for her and a complete makeup job. Grey says Sadat and Reagan are both “beautiful women, with or without their makeup on.” Emboldened by our snooping success, we headed for the other Aida’s place. (Full name is Aida Thibiant, for those not in the face-place know). And in a sneak-preview look at this week’s appointment book we saw time slots for Alana Stewart, Rod Stewart, Victoria Principal, Catherine Bach and Linda Gray. Aren’t you glad we had our glasses on?

Dick Cavett says he could have used the advice sooner. “It came too late to do me any good,” he says of the new Esquire Success series for men on videotape. The TV personality delivers a humorous essay in the segment called “Professional Style: Dressing Well as Part of Career Success.” The 57-minute, $29.95 tape reached book and video stores in November and includes advice by such menswear designers as Alexander Julian and Robert Stock. Cavett says the Esquire tape “would have saved me a lot of grief”--especially at Yale. But Cavett, host of a new show on the USA network and in Los Angeles this week to appear at their Ace Awards, says learning about fashion at this late date won’t affect his style much. When at home in New York, Cavett says: “The cab drivers say, ‘You look worse than Woody Allen.’ ” And in public life, Cavett still favors the browns and tans not usually synonymous with dressing for success. “I never thought about successful colors,” Cavett says. “Eddie Murphy is a success and he wears orange leather.”

The beautiful book titled “Couture” is causing raised eyebrows in the publishing industry. In fact, no one at the 5-year-old publishing house of Stewart, Tabori & Chang thought they’d have a hot seller on their hands when they recently published it. “Sure, it’s gorgeous and lavishly illustrated with 500 photos of the most beautiful clothes ever made,” the firm’s Deborah Downing says. “It’s an exquisite Christmas gift. But we couldn’t have predicted the success with which it’s been met. We’re thinking of publishing lots more fashion books now.” The volume ($65 at I. Magnin and bookstores) has text by Caroline Milbanks, former head of Sotheby’s costume department. “She’d always wanted a definitive fashion book she could turn to but there weren’t any. So she decided to write it herself,” says Downing, who adds that it was “a mammoth task,” involving more than three years of photo and fashion research. When 120 copies of the volume first reached Rizzoli, the chic Manhattan bookerie, they were all gone in a few days. “That’s when we knew we had a hit on our hands,” Downing says.

You can’t call him bi-coastal--geography prohibits. But you can say hair stylist Paul Ninast is dividing more and more time between Texas and California. The 32-year-old Dallas-based stylist, who has coiffed such celebrities as actress Susan Howard, Olivia Newton-John and model Renee Russo, spent much of last week shoring up heads at the Capriccio boutique in La Jolla. One of the clients was Howard (who shortened her hair several months ago, in keeping with Ninast’s view of her as “a racy lady”). The actress on “Dallas” and nine others partook of Ninast’s latest beauty method: a concentrated citrus-juice perm he discovered in Paris last spring. Ninast says the four-step fruity perm has been fluffing heads in Europe for decades but remains a rarity in the United States. He won’t disclose the product name, only: “I’ve been looking for a perm like this for quite some time.” Ninast says it doesn’t frizz hair or smell like chemicals. But those oranges do cost: Ninast charges $250 a perm.

When you see Cybill Shepherd on the Barbara Walters Christmas special on Tuesday, don’t expect her to wear the usual ice-queen pastels. The actress, who plays Maddie Hayes on “Moonlighting,” will be wearing a lipstick-red outfit by costume designer Robert Turturice. Cybill will don a Chinese silk-brocade smoking jacket, a gold-metal filigree belt and silk Charmeuse trousers and camisole. And should the camera veer that far, notice the red velvet slippers.

It’s not enough to jog in sneakers that keep track of your running mileage. Now there’s a wristwatch that monitors your pulse. The wristwatch Pulse Monitor by Bodyguard will ping an alarm when you’ve reached the upper limit of your desired heart rate, as well as give notice when your pulse has slowed below the workout range. The $59.95 digital watch, distributed by J. Oglaend Inc. of Mount Kisco, N.Y. (the American subsidiary of the Scandinavian bicycle manufacturer) has attachments to fingertip and earlobe--which would make listening to your body a breeze on the stationary bike but a little more cumbersome on the basketball court.

Revival Time: There’s the old Pasha, Cartier’s solid gold waterproof watch created 52 years ago for the Pasha of Marrakech. Then there’s the new Pasha--described by Cartier as the “big, strong, commanding watch . . . for those few men who live to challenge and prevail.” Obviously, the international jewelry house doesn’t think too many men fit the job description because they’ve only made 700 new Pashas for the entire world. But before you rush out to be the first on your posh block to have a Pasha, be advised the price tags range from $3,750 to $9,900, depending upon choice of band and a few other details. Of course you will get a timepiece that is “unique, magical, persuasive, even passionate, yet with its own sense of classic elegance,” according to the jewelry firm. That roughly translates into an 18-karat gold sports watch that can sink to depths of 330 feet, a cobochon-sapphire stem protected by a fancy retractable sealer cap, a luminous dial with four cardinal numbers and a few options, including a special timing device for serious divers.

Now the cosmetics and fragrance industries are banding together to fight AIDS. And they’re asking for help from Hollywood. A steering committee is forming to plan a first benefit, called COS-A.I.D.S., to take place in April in New York. So far the organizing committee consists of Ronn Charles of Parfums Van Cleef & Arpels, Richard Lindstrom, president of the International Cosmetics and Fragrance Distributors, and Michael Paulle, vice president of Synarome Corp. of America, a French fragrance manufacturer. Paulle tells Listen: “We’re looking for support from stars who have done fragrance ads, people like Jane Seymour, Catherine Deneuve, Stefanie Powers, Joan Collins and Linda Evans.”

The boot goes on: Coty Award-winning designer Gil Truedsson has been named spokesperson for the Western Boot Council of America and was in town recently to do television interviews a-boot you know what. How did Truedsson get his foot in it this time? “The Western Council heard I was a kind of aficionado on the subject, so they sought me out,” says Truedsson, who keeps one foot in fashion and the other in a horse farm in Connecticut. Truedsson says the council was impressed to learn that he accepted his 1979 Coty Award wearing a pair of black lizard boots below his tux. He has three other pairs in his closet: alligators, African anteaters and a cowhide pair for horsing around.