Understated to Flamboyant: Night Bloomers Run the Gamut

There’s a trick to it, no doubt about that. The delicate art of dressing right for late-night, Hollywood clubs isn’t as easy as you might think.

“At one club everybody’s dressed yuppie-trendy, at another they’ve all got safety pins through their noses. One place it’s all-revealing, low-cut dresses and spike-heel shoes, and someplace else it’s cowboy boots. Then sometimes people dress entirely to go with the band.”

This overview belongs to Michele Vice. She’s a songwriter and a club regular whose social life just starts cooking when most respectable kitchens are closed.

Vice knows her way around the clubs--the Palace, the Bar DeLuxe, Power Tools. She’s seen them all. She can tell you what to wear to The Whiskey, Club Lingerie, Madame Wong’s West. But hers is a rare condition.

Jas Scott-Moncrieff is more typical.

His girlfriend, Carolyne Crum, says he asks her what to wear when they’re stepping out after midnight. “What shirt with what pants,” for example.

“Last night,” Crum says, “I tried to get him to wear a pin. But it had rhinestones on it and he thought that was too much. Men are getting more daring in what they wear. But it’s a slow process.”

One recent night on their way out, she helped him chose a white T-shirt and a pair of jeans, suspenders and shiny, patent-leather oxfords.

Then, with the certainty that comes of experience, she dressed herself--in a man’s suit jacket, a long black skirt, a big belt and big bag--simple clothes to show off her boyish haircut and her good cheekbones.

“You want to look like you’re not dressed up to go out,” she explains. “You want to look the way you looked all day.”

Not everyone sees it Crum’s way.

Lauren Ferraro mixes paisley with panne velvet, embroidered lapels with appliqued slip-on shoes.

Mindy Giel makes her hair stand up straight, bares her midriff and piles on bangle bracelets.

And John Cosgrove’s necktie, with its great girth and giant floral print, is hardly what you call subtle.”

Crum knows why: “Two types of people go to the clubs. There’s the understated and there’s the flamboyant type. If you dress flamboyant, your personality has to stand out as much as your clothes.”