FASHION Magazine

It’s 11:30 p.m. on a Friday night in Toronto’s west end. A crowd of twenty- and thirtysomethings are lined up outside La Perla lounge for an event called Her, organized by Frank Griggs—fashion designer Jeremy Laing’s communications director and husband. The looming line looks as though it was pulled from a casting call for a ’90s music video. A guy at the front of the queue—wearing low-rider bell bottoms, champagne-hued fun fur and a CeCe Peniston tour ball cap—is chatting up a young woman dolled up in an apricot catsuit replete with a handbag covered in Keith Haring art pins. Anxious to get their hands stamped, the duo sway to a house remix of En Vogue’s vintage hit “Hold On” blaring from the DJ booth inside. A skinny-jeaned teen sporting a graphic T-shirt that reads “House Music Is The Future” gets out of a cab and joins the pair. “Honey, this is no novelty tee,” he says, pointing to the neon font on his chest. “This is a prophecy tee.”

According to ethnomusicologist Kai Fikentscher, that tee isn’t just a fashion statement, it’s a cultural one. The author of “You Better Work!” Underground Dance Music in New York City claims that house—a soulful branch of electronic music typically set to a 4/4 tempo—is infiltrating nightlife, fashion and film. “After over 20 years of bubbling below the belt of the status quo, house is finally starting to get the global respect and popularity it deserves,” Fikentscher says.

Known for diva-centric vocals, lush strings and syncopated bass, house saw a popularity peak in the late ’80s and early ’90s when hit makers such as Inner City, Crystal Waters and DJ Frankie Knuckles delivered it to radio from its roots in the gay nightclubs of Chicago and New York. Surviving well beyond its older, kitschier sister, disco, house did not die at the hands of grunge—it just moved further into the underground when Nirvana came along. “It has had so many reincarnations and new names,” says Fikentscher, citing nu-disco and electro. “In the past five years, a proper resurrection of [soulful] house has truly been happening.”

The resurgence isn’t just about nostalgia. A new wave of vocalists, songwriters, rappers and designers who weren’t old enough to party in the late ’80s are embracing the sophisticated boom boom. Cutting-edge MCs such as Toronto’s Isis Salam; 23-year-old New Yorker Le1f, who DJed Patrik Ervell’s spring runway show and performed at Opening Ceremony’s 10th anniversary party; and House of Ladosha (they rap about Naomi Campbell’s weave) are experimenting with the look and sound of house, and attracting bigger audiences because of it. Pop names such as Beth Ditto, whose club hit “I Wrote The Book” is a flagrant homage to Madonna’s “Vogue,” Rihanna (her new disc transparently lifts from ’90s DJ duo Masters at Work) and Scissor Sisters have pushed classic, soulful house into the mainstream.