Nicole Briese

It’s 7pm, and the eclectic mix of patrons filing into the Kit Kat Club at 3700 North Halsted are scrambling to find seats closest to the bar. Here for Sine Qua Non’s annual Streets of Chicago fashion benefit, they will be served a variety of complimentary martinis for the next hour.

Their styles mesh strangely well with the lounge’s classic yet hip vibe.

A vast array of women sporting short spiky hair, armband tattoos and dressed-up muscle tees immediately crowd the room, sandwiching themselves into the small groups of tables the club offers for seating. The smaller population of men, sporting frosted tips and unnaturally tight, dark jeans, flit to and fro around the club. The occasional female impersonator can also be seen, immediately distinguishable by their abnormally large physiques.

Women caress and kiss each other beneath the scattered black-and-white photographs of Hollywood starlets adorning the walls. Above it all, an entrancing mix plays, people swaying back and forth to the beat.

In the show’s third year, the packed room seems to ensure a hefty donation to the Howard Brown Health Center, an organization specializing in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender health care. "We like to help out organizations that are local," Emily Hartl, the show’s co-producer, says.

Hartl says the show is going for a "Project Runway" approach, featuring four different themes from four different local designers and hairstylists.

As things get started, people jump out of their seats to line the walls of the club, leaving space for the "runway" between the wall and the bar that ends with a small stage at the front of the room.

The first model emerges in one of designer Trisha Star’s fairy-themed creations, a bundle of nerves. Her awkward smile and unsure walk are more noticeable than the pale sea-foam green slashed piece of cloth she is wearing over thin Ugg-and-or-Pocahontas-inspired boots. The rest of the models follow her lead, anxiously seeking the approval of the crowd. The thin mousy braids accompanying their quiet style is overshadowed by their harsh makeup.

Then comes Harrison Cheair’s "baby doll" inventions, changing everything. The show has suddenly been kicked up a notch, as girls with perfect ringlets strut past in bold pastels, pretty yellow tops over cotton candy spandex. They are missing only lollipops.

Switching it up again, the baby-doll girls file out as the music changes, and the "hip-hop" models replace them. Energetic and armed with mohawks and soft afros, the presentation is enough to overlook the otherwise ordinary Ross Vargas Design jean skirts and windbreakers. While NYC urban chic comes to mind, so does K-mart.

The final theme by Jeff Millbern offers relief with its classy all-white rendition of the 1970s, sprinkled with gold accessories. A gravity-defying concoction of hair rests in a perfect sphere atop a groovy model’s head, wowing the crowd. The amazing hair keeps right on coming, transforming even a plain white tee with white jeans into sheer elegance. A white satin mini-dress steals the show.

The evening, presumably finished, does not end there.

Dressed in four glamorous and loudly colored gowns, models make their way to the front of the room for a short dance performance. Strange beings in executioner-like gray masks give off an odd sexual charge as they write around the models, wielding measuring tapes galore. A ballerina then takes the spotlight, standing on her head in a pink tutu and gyrating her way through the group of now frozen models. A mermaid nymph appears out of nowhere, and the lounge is transformed into an eerie funhouse as they all dance together for the finale.

(2007-06-15)

Also by Nicole Briese

Landmark on the Lake
At the corner of Chestnut and Lake Shore at the Lake Shore Athletic Club this afternoon, twenty or so people are lining up enthusiastically to sport t-shirts and wield picket signs
(2007-06-12)

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