What Price, Fashion?

Petra O. was at the Beauty Bar December 10 with her friend Charles Crisp.

"It was a Monday night," says Petra. "It was pretty packed. There was a black female hip-hop MC. She asked the crowd to come up and do charades. Charles went up onstage. I was break dancing. Everyone saw my outfit."

Both Petra and Crisp are fashion designers. Petra's outfit included black boots with white shoelaces.

"We were taken aside by someone in the crowd. I knew his last name. He was Jewish. He asked me if I knew what [white shoelaces] meant. I told him yes, that I was from Austria, and that white shoelaces can be a skinhead Nazi thing. But you have to go with the whole outfit." She says if she was trying to make a Nazi fashion statement, she would have needed to wear a bomber jacket, rolled up jeans, and have a shaved head.

About ten minutes later, Petra and Charles were ushered out by security.

"This black bouncer comes up and asks me to step outside. My friend Charles gets pulled in the other direction. I get taken outside and around the corner. I didn't want to get taken too far because I didn't know what his intentions were. I joked, 'Do I need weapons to defend myself?' There was silence. The bouncer said, 'This is not a joke.' He asked me if I was trying to cause any problems or endanger any of the partying crowd. He asked me, 'Do you know what you're wearing?' He said someone in the crowd told him I was wearing a neo-Nazi outfit, and that raised a red flag. I told him I'm a fashion designer, that I like fashion. These boots are fashionable. I wear stuff because it might be provocative. That's part of fashion...."

Petra says her friend Charles was also questioned about his clothing.

"They went after him for wearing red suspenders, which is supposed to be another Nazi thing. They weren't even red; they were maroon....

We were left in an awkward position. He didn't offer to invite us back in. I'm not going back there. We laughed all the way home to Hillcrest."

A couple of messages left at the Beauty Bar went unreturned.