‘Color It Improv’ Comic Roles Up Her Sleeves : Stand-up: Kim Coles, whose characters include an inner-city teen, a Long Island wife and a movie star, performs Monday in Brea.

So what’s up with the names of all these new perfumes?

“I remember when perfumes had lovely names like Joy and Shalimar, “ says comedian Kim Coles. “Now, it seems the names of the new perfumes reflect what’s going on in the world: Obsession. Opium. Decadence. Poison! What comes after Poison? . . .

“One day one of those fancy French designers will just take a bottle and say, ‘Ladies! I would like to introduce to you my new perfume . . . Spit!’ ”

Next, Coles mimics spitting on her inner wrist, then licking it on--not exactly what you’d expect from an attractive young woman. And while such unladylike moments are rare in her act, it proves one thing about the poised and polished Coles: She’s not afraid to go for the big laugh.

Coles, who was a first-season regular on Fox’s “In Living Color,” is a talented character comedian whose bio includes these “special skills”: “Characters, dialects, shopping and the ability to apply makeup at lightning speed.”

The Brooklyn-born comedian is one of four black comics who will perform at the one-night-only “Color It Improv” show at the Brea Improv on Monday. Also on the bill are Ken Sagoes, Fazion Love and D. L. Hughley.

“Color It Improv,” which is designed to give exposure to minority comics, has been a weekly feature at the Santa Monica Improv for the past eight months and has become so popular that the Improv has decided to take the show on the road. Brea is the first in a series of cross-country stops featuring a changing bill of comics at the 16 Improvs across the country.

“It’s a lot of fun because it’s a real positive room to perform in,” said Coles, who has appeared several times at “Color It Improv” night in Santa Monica. “There are a lot of black comics that don’t get a chance to perform in other clubs, so it’s a real nurturing kind of environment.”

Coles had been “dabbling” in comedy for only a year in New York when she made her national TV debut on “It’s Showtime at the Apollo” in 1988. It was the first of many appearances on the show for Coles, who became known as That Girl From the Apollo. As she said in a phone interview from Los Angeles, “It led to everything.”

After doing the Apollo show, she said, “Star Search” called (she did one show but lost), she began touring with singer Luther Vandross and went on to open for Sinbad, Damon Wayans, the Temptations, Robert Townsend and other headliners. She even did the audience warm-up for “The Cosby Show.”

When “In Living Color” was looking for stand-up comics who could do sketch comedy, it signed up Coles, whose repertoire of characters is a virtual United Nations. There’s:

* A Puerto Rican girl--”Maria Linda Rosa Garcia Rodrigues del Sangria del Corazon Rosa--and a whole lot more last names that I can’t do right now as I be out of breath.”

* Blossom McNeal, a West Indian character.

* Patty Perfect, a cosmetic counter girl.

* Susan Greenberg O’Steinovich, a woman who lives on Long Island with her husband, Harold, and two perfect children.

* Shaniqua Jefferson, a “typical” inner-city 19-year-old.

And then there’s Vanity:

“Hi, (gush) I’m Vanity. (giggle) You know me. I’m an actress, a movie star, a centerfold, a singer--well, sometimes. As you know I’ve had a very active sexual life. (High-pitched giggle) Why, I’ve slept with every man in Hollywood from Action Jackson to Grace Jones (giggle).”

“I love doing the characters,” Coles said. “I’m a people watcher. It sounds so corny, but it’s true. I’ll meet someone and hear their voice, and I can’t wait to rush home and stand in front of a mirror and mimic their voices and mannerisms.”

All the characters she does are either real people or derivatives of people she has seen, Coles said. Even in school “I used to mimic teachers, friends, enemies”--she said, laughing--”friends that became enemies because I did it. But I was never cruel. I try not to be.”

In describing her stand-up style, Coles said she’s “very influenced by Sinbad--he’s very energetic and very positive. He doesn’t say a thing to alienate anyone. I want everyone to have a good time. So it’s very Sinbad-esque with a little bit of Whoopi and Lily Tomlin thrown in for good measure.”

During her stint on “In Living Color,” Coles played everything from Downtown Julie Brown to Robin Givens to the daughter of the West Indian family in the sitcom spoof “Hey Mon.”

“I always ended up playing the pretty girl, much to my dismay,” Coles said.

What now appears to be a simple case of typecasting would have been unthinkable in 1984, the year Coles was named first runner-up in the Big Beautiful Woman pageant in Atlantic City.

The pageant marked the first time that Cole, who was then “heavy, but not obese,” ever did stand-up. With a month to prepare for the talent competition, she wrote a routine in which she spoofed beauty pageants: She came out on stage as a “large-sized woman” in a sequined leotard and talked about the “skinny Minnies and how they think they’re so cute.”

“I saw the audience reaction and said, ‘This is it!’ ” As a kid, she said, “I was always the one who’d put M&Ms; up her nose in school or eat crackers and try to whistle and just do stuff girls aren’t supposed to do.”

Coles worked as a large-sized model--”my fighting weight was 185,” she jokes--before getting into comedy professionally. She decided to lose weight after a club owner recommended she either lose weight or put on more pounds.

“He told me I was not enough of a ‘type,’ ” recalled Coles. “He said, ‘You’re either going to have to lose weight and become a babe, or you might as well gain it and become a Nell Carter type.’ ”

With the help of a friend who had been a personal trainer, she shed 45 pounds in five months. Now she goes to the gym four days a week. But like everyone else, even a slimmed-down Coles has to work to stay trim.

In fact, she’s so dedicated that she decided to stick with her aerobics class even when she went on vacation to Jamaica.

“Now, they don’t have Jack LaLanne’s in Jamaica,” she says in her act. “But they do have Jack LaMarley’s, ok? And I walked in and met the world’s first West Indian aerobics instructor. I walked in and she said (in a sing-song Jamaican accent), ‘Girlfriend, whatchyou been eatin’? . . . You’re so fat, you know? Well, put on your leotard, we’re gonna wind up your waist and make you look real g-o-o-o-d. Ready? . . .”

Kim Coles, Ken Sagoes, Fazion Love and D. L. Hughley will perform Monday at 8:30 p.m. at the Brea Improv, 945 Birch St., Brea. $10. (714) 529-8438.