Nicole Briese

Of the fifty chairs Borders has set up for the book signing of fashion legend and now author Cynthia Rowley, only half are full. An older couple sits in the second row, thumbing through her book, "Slim: A Fantasy Memoir," chuckling and making remarks like, "very true," or "very pretty!" A man in the back row wears a flamboyant flamingo top, clearly a fashion junkie. When Rowley herself enters the room, there is no mistaking who she is. She stops to hug flamboyant-shirt guy and makes her way to the front of the room on a pair of stick-thin legs, wearing what is sure to be one of her own designs—a bright green scoopneck minidress over a pair of pink stacked-suede heels. Her hair is pulled back in a messy updo, and she is nonchalantly sipping coffee from an oversized red Seattle mug.

She waves at another familiar face in the crowd. "I know everybody here already," she jokes. "They’re my friends and neighbors." Before she begins to read excerpts from her book, she warns that it is only "loosely based on reality." Referring to the James Frey incident, she says "I thought I would out myself."

She dives into the reading, noting that this is "kind of the beginning of, I guess, how I started in fashion." She read three chapters, then asks if she should read one more. A little girl in the front row cries, "Ya!" and Rowley laughs—it’s her daughter. "I give birth to my own fanclub."

(2007-06-22)

Also by Nicole Briese

Fashion Fusion
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
(2007-06-15)

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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