Cooking in Costume

A friend gave Alyson Horn, an avid home chef, a spanking white double-breasted chef’s jacket to acknowledge her love of cooking. As a lark, Horn wore it for her next dinner party and found that she liked it. It was comfortable, the material breathed and it cleaned up well. But there was more to it than that. Much more.

“People tend to perceive you differently,” she says. “If the party is a little more formal, it makes it a fun thing. You’re not just a slave in the kitchen; you’re the chef and you’re having fun.”

Horn is far from alone. The days are over when the tomato sauce-splattered apron admonishing you to “Kiss the Cook” represented the peak of domestic culinary attire. Largely thanks to Chefwear--based in Chicago, with offices in Los Angeles--the home chef can dress with the best of the culinary avant-garde.

Dissatisfied with the uncomfortable duds she was issued while a student at the Culinary Institute of America, Rochelle Huppin Fleck founded Chefwear 13 years ago on the premise that chef attire needed a little spicing up. Professional chefs eager to wriggle out of their traditionally restrictive uniforms and into something more comfortable were quick to embrace her line of loose-fitting garments in frivolous, if not wacky, patterns. But with the explosion of the Food Network (on which Chefwear advertises) and all other things culinary, Fleck began marketing to amateurs.

Hot Tomatoes, Cheetah, Psychedelic Tie Dyed, Fiesta, Wine Valley, Black Chile Pepper are just a few of the patterns that appeal to cooking enthusiasts. Camouflage appears to be as hot as a blowtorch, and Fleck says classic geometric patterns such as houndstooth are on the rise.

“It’s been kind of an interesting progression,” Fleck says. At first, she explains, networks “didn’t want someone like Wolfgang Puck wearing professional clothes on television because it seemed too intimidating. Now you see him in whites all the time, and people’s attitudes have changed. They want to dress like a professional at home.” This becomes apparent in places such as Surfas, the Culver City kitchen and restaurant supply store, where owner Diane Surfas says amateurs are driving the robust sale of chef attire.

“I think wearing chef clothing when you’re having a dinner party makes people think, ‘He’s serious, we’re in for a good meal,’ ” says Richard Klein, a Pacific Palisades management consultant who recently hosted a dinner party for 50. “There were a lot of people there who didn’t know me, and they kept asking me where my restaurant was.”

“It gives people a little shock, but then they get caught up in the fun of it,” adds Kevin Schoeler, a Santa Monica investor who prefers the customary all-white outfits--up to a point. Like many others, he draws the line at a toque: “I doubt I’d ever wear it. Unless maybe I was outside grilling in the rain.”

Chefwear, (800) 568-2433, www.chefwear.com.