Chicago has a great music scene and a great theater scene; our comedy scene is like a Saturday Night Live farm. In the culinary department lately, the eyes of the world are on us. And hey, if you believe the sloganeers at the Chicago International Film Festival, we’re the Film Capital of the World. But no one has ever even pretended that we’re anywhere near the cutting edge when it comes to fashion.
SYNDROME | With racks of clothing under track lighting in the front and a computer station in the back, the main room of Syndrome’s basement-level headquarters has a bat-cave vibe, like if you pulled a lever a wall would open up and reveal a factory full of busy Oompa Loompas.
He closed Black Moon in 1994 and opened Untitled in a nearby storefront. For nearly a decade he bought clothes wholesale, like the typical retail operator, but in the fall of 2000, dissatisfied with what was out there, he tried his hand at designing again, making a few pairs of men’s pants that he hung in the back of the store. They flew off the racks, so he also did some shirts. Those were just as successful.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
BRUISER | Designing clothing, says Shirley Novak, is “almost like making costumes for moods.” Her cheeky Bruiser label has strong themes and expressive signature pieces–the fall/winter 2004 line, Urban Piracy, for example, included a floaty chiffon “pirate ghost dress” with a silver-sequin applique anchor. Last season, a dark teal “Frankenstein coat” had a puffy applique heart on the front and lungs on the back, a gold-and-pink tulle overlay, and bright orange whipstitching on unfinished seams. Like many of her items, it snaps up the sides, engineered for ease. Every piece in her current line, Correspondent, was designed so she could ride her bike in it, including long, stretchy cotton twill cropped pants with pin-tucked seams. Her versatile chiffon “karate shirt” has a waist sash and a long slit that can be worn in back or front; her “flexible jumpsuit,” made from heavy stretch jersey, comes with flirty short shorts and can be worn long like a dress or scrunched up around the waist for a sassier look. “You get to make the final call on what kind of thing it is,” she says. LA | Penelope’s
DI-O | Who knows what kind of climate you’d wear an open-backed sweater vest in, but if you find yourself there, poet and performance artist Dionne “Brownskin” Fraser-Carter and Underground Railroad rapper Nicole Howell–together the crochet team DI-O–have just the thing. Their soft, springy creations include hot pants, jumpsuits, bridal gowns, and bikini, halter, and tube tops, plus designs that can’t be categorized, like a one-armed tunic that looks like a shapeless tablecloth from the front and a slutty little top from the back or a one-legged pantsuit with a midriff-baring short-sleeved keyhole sweater and matching armbands. Fraser-Carter and Howell go nuts with weaves and colors, mixing lattice, lace, flowers, and ribbing with camo prints and blocks of color that begin to lose shape and symmetry toward the bottom of a garment. But they occasionally depart from the freaky to create fine, durable, wearable shawls and shrugs. LA | Habit
JACKIE KILMER | The spheres of fashion design and catfishing intersect at exactly one point: Jackie Kilmer, the designer also known as Mississippi Jackie Hurt. She was an early adopter of the vintage reconstruction aesthetic–at one point she called herself Dirdy Bunnie and worked in torn-up sweaters and kids’ sheets. As popular taste caught up with the trend, Kilmer bailed on it, moving back to her hometown of Omaha for eight months to listen to folk, blues, and the Beach Boys and to catch catfish. “I caught and killed my birthday dinner,” she says proudly. Returning to Chicago, she found the demand for her sweaters as high as ever, but began working instead in a style that lifts elements from further back in time. “I’m making skirts, woolen knickers, chaps made from sweaters,” she says. “I’m messing around with old-man flannels, the real crusty kind from the 70s. They’re real itchy and hard to work with.” There are also gunless cowhide holsters (Kilmer’s best-selling item) and cowhide cuffs that look like insane-asylum restraints. MR | Una Mae’s Freak Boutique
DORIS RUTH | Allie Adams’s line of vintage-inspired clothing, named after her grandmother, is two and a half years old, but Adams didn’t quit her full-time job as a writer for a brokerage firm until this past August. Nights, weekends, and perhaps the occasional hour of company time were devoted to her collections, full-on feminine clothes informed by the hourglass silhouette of the 1950s. There are poofy silk skirts draped and swagged to show off an underskirt, fitted jackets of luxuriously soft velvet fastened with a single rhinestone-encrusted button, and elegant, wide-legged tuxedo pants in violet and burgundy as well as the usual black.
