Baby’s Night Out

Never mind the high-decibel techno music pounding away at 120 beats per second or the trippy, continually morphing fractal graphics projected onto giant screens or even the late hour. When it comes to how people dress for raves, they might as well be heading to “Romper Room.”

Lining up outside a “map point” recently (a location where ravers receive tickets and directions to underground raves), hundreds of girls with their hair in pigtails wait alongside guys with hands encased in puffy white Mickey Mouse gloves. Over at Magic Wednesdays--a weekly club based in the World in Hollywood that serves up rave music and ambience on a weekly basis--glo-stick-waving late-teen and twentysomethings gyrate on the dance floor decked out in candy-colored outfits, Dr. Seuss hats, Bert and Ernie backpacks, Hello Kitty paraphernalia and whistles. And just about everybody has a pacifier dangling from the neck on a string of plastic beads--when they’re not sucking on it, that is. For most scenesters, retro-fashion may be the ultimate in regression, but ravers have gone beyond that. Way beyond. Over the years, raves may have grown and gone suburban, but the clothes have never left the crib. In these multimedia fantasy lands, baby wear rules.

“When you were young, didn’t you used to play with toys?” asks 21-year-old Justin Pitter, who goes by the nom-de-rave Kryolon. Pitter has shown up at Magic Wednesdays (he also hits about two full-blown raves a week) sporting a Superman shirt and pants, a pacifier and a transparent plastic backpack with a can of Play-Doh hanging from the zipper and plenty of toys inside. “When you got older, your parents told you not to do that anymore. Now that we’re grown up, why not go out and act like kids? It’s colorful and it’s happy and it’s all about having a good time.”

“I’d say the kiddie crowd is the most visible crowd within the ravers,” says Ken Lawrence of Pure Acid, a company that operates concession booths at raves and at clubs such as Magic Wednesdays.

Pure Acid offers ravers not only CDs of popular DJ mixes, but pacifiers, whistles, toys, beads and the No. 1 rave refreshment, Charms Blow-Pops. “Raves and clubs like this pretty much give you an excuse to act more childlike than you usually do--all without hurting anybody. So people like to dress up like cartoon characters to add to the silly environment. It’s a synergy of everybody coming together and making a strange environment. It makes it more fun.”

While that may be valid, it’s also true that the pacifier--the most ubiquitous rave accessory and the item that probably served as the genesis for the baby wear craze--sometimes has a more practical purpose: It keeps ravers from grinding their teeth while high on the scene’s drug of choice, Ecstasy.

Pitter and his club companion, 22-year-old Aimee Macabeo, a.k.a. Star, say they never ingest anything more potent than water. But many other ravers privately admit the pacifier’s ties to Ecstasy, although many also add that it has evolved away from its drug roots into a cute fashion accessory.

“The whole scene is based on drugs,” says Atousa, a veteran L.A. raver and designer of the clothing line A Liquid Affair. “But it’s gone totally mainstream. It’s a whole lifestyle for these kids now. You’ll see kids sitting on the floor and they’re playing with dolls and eating candy and you think you’re back in kindergarten. I’ve even seen kids carrying blankies.”

Atousa cruises the scene looking for inspiration for her designs. For instance, she recently created an opalescent jacket with a fur collar and hood. The effect, she says, “is to make you look like Snow Bunny.”

Nowadays, stores such as Ministry of Aesthetics, Pasty and Ultramarket sell rave wear by such designers as A Liquid Affair and carry plastic toys and trinkets, many with cartoon motifs imported from the capital of cute, Japan. Still, putting together a baby wear ensemble seldom translates into one-stop retail shopping. With raves typically costing about $20 a head, high-ticket clothing is rarely an option. So many ravers sew their own.

“It’s cheaper and you have the freedom to do anything you want,” Pitter says. He and Macabeo, he says, often spend afternoons in the garment district hunting down fabrics to stitch into pants, shirts or dresses on their home sewing machines. Macabeo adds that only one brand inspires her to pay mall prices: the Hello Kitty stuff sold in such stores as San Rio Gift Gate in the Beverly Center. “I can’t help it,” she says. “I love Hello Kitty.”

*

Those without design skills usually hit the thrift stores. While much of the vintage clothing in adult sizes has long since left the Salvation Army for the pricey racks of Melrose Avenue, such in-demand baby labels as Playskool and Sesame Street remain.

“I put this whole thing together for less than $10,” brags 19-year-old raver Theresa Lee, who hits about a rave a week draped in a plastic Minnie Mouse raincoat with plastic daisies in her hair, a Sesame Street pack on her back, toy watch on her wrist and, of course, a pacifier not far from her mouth.

And, often you can find the best and funnest stuff without even leaving the house.

“I would separate and save stuff that I loved even while I was a kid, so I still have it,” says Macabeo as she prepares her wardrobe for the upcoming weekend’s raves. “People would always tell me, ‘Oh, grow up.’ But I never really did.”