By Liz Armstrong | Photographs by Jim Newberry

FOR THIS ISSUE, the first filter we applied was hometown pride: we presented a vast collection of garments and accessories by Chicago designers to four local stylists and asked them to concoct outfits for six models, all of whom are artists working in the city. The stylists did what professional stylists do, developing fantastical narratives for their models, thinking about who their characters were and what they might be up to, and clothing them accordingly. Which, if you think about it, is just an extreme version of what anyone with style does every day.

 
(1) The fluttery sleeves on a scandalously low-cut, tie-waist blue disco dress ($160) by Lindsey Boland make it as fit for a faerie as a flirt. At Habit, the boutique Boland owns.

When Heather Kenny started putting this outfit together, she was thinking samurai—the shape of the dress and the wrap together looked almost kimono-like. But the faux-wolf-fur hat, Kenny’s own, changed everything. Suddenly Melisa Young, aka rapper Kid Sister, looked more like a tough Siberian princess, with a ring for a shield and a warrior strap around her arm. Kenny’s used to revamping on the fly—as a personal stylist/ shopper she helps clients clean out their closets, find a look, and then shop for it. Kenny also writes about fashion for North Shore magazine, Women’s Wear Daily, and the Reader.


Melisa Young, aka Kid Sister, is an MC who performs with the DJ duo Flosstradamus. She’s performing September 29 at Sonotheque with Flosstradamus’s J2K, her younger brother.
 

 
(2) Recent School of the Art Institute graduate Abigail Glaum-Lathbury says her jacket ($290) was inspired by bugs, for instance “the way a beetle’s wings fold under themselves to form one oval shape.” The idea’s most visible in the finishing touches of this jacket—the raw-edged appliques of cotton and gauze layered on the chest lie flat but give a sense of depth. At Habit.

“I know there’s supposed to be some kind of rule about mixing brown and black,” says Sarah Ponder, “but I don’t care.” She says she was thinking along the lines of the Japanese “gothic Lolita,” or “gothloli,” style when she put together this outfit. “The flowers in her hair brought a sort of delicate and feminine touch, while the rest has a hard, bizarre edge to it.” A California girl, Ponder moved here about three years ago, after dropping out of the gender studies program at the University of California in Santa Cruz. She lived in Malaysia for five months, where she says she “fell off motorbikes and was chased by monkeys,” and is now studying fashion business at Columbia College and working at Language in Wicker Park. Recently she’s done styling for the NOVA Fashion Train and for Venus and Time Out Chicago.


Jillian Valentino cofounded Avant Trill, a production company that’s booked shows by the likes of Peaches and Le Tigre’s JD Samson in Chicago. Every Tuesday night she cohosts Outdanced!, a superstylish queer-friendly party at Funky Buddha Lounge. Starting October 6 she’s cohosting New Indie Mafia night at Sonotheque the first Friday of every month.