Local designer Karen Bogut of Vox Pop was in the Quarry Street café sipping a frothy cappuccino one night when she got a seemingly frothy idea.

A staff of coffee servers dressed in vinyl pants? Sure! It's durable, practical (get a little java on you, wipe off with Armor All!) and appropriately stylish for this stylish little cafe in Old City.

Uniforming a wait staff has come a long way since the days of the white shirt and black pants combo. Chain restaurants, of course, have long been enamored of one-style-fits-all, from TGIFriday's candystripes to Hooters' skimpy (read offensive) T-shirts.

But lately the concept of uniforming has been raised to new heights of chic. The hotter-than-hot new martini bar, the Continental in Old City, lets servers wear their own trendy clothes — but only in black. Haute cuisinieres at Walnut Street's Striped Bass have gone one stylish step further by hiring local designer Mariann Boston to create a collection of pieces for servers to mix and match. And designer Giorgio Armani, who's added adjunct cafes to his Emporio Armani boutiques in Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Costa Mesa, California, has dressed waiters in (what else?) his own sleek Italian lines.

Even McDonald's has improved the threads in one of their restaurants. Staff in a McDonald's on 125th Street in New York City, Harlem's Main Street, have been uniformed in African Kente cloth designs by Carol Reilly.

"We wanted to create an environment in the store that was reflective of the community, the Afrocentric environment."

(Reilly's uniforms were on display at the Smithsonian Institute as part of their Dress Codes: Urban Folk Fashion exhibit last year.)

Creating a conducive, stimulating aura for chowing down is what it's all about — and the style of the uniforms often reflect the type of food being served. Form equals content; threads equal grub.

The City Tavern in Old City colonializes their staff in bonnets and waistcoasts to serve Shepherd's Pie, while Center City's tapas restaurant Pamplona seems to favor a loose, comfortable dress code of sturdy work boots worn with dresses in rayon prints or black.

"Doc Martens, anything with a tread that's durable for walking on the marbled floors," says Pamplona general manager Christie McKeon. "And we don't really require a rayon print dress, but rayon prints tend to wear well with all the olive oil we serve. One stain on plain rayon and you're a goner."

McKeon says the style isn't really a fashion statement, but that it fits in with the unconventional, bohemian nature of the restaurant, where many small dishes are served at once and everyone shares.

Still, there are some restaurants who scoff at any kind of uniform. For eateries like Judy's and Astral Plane, both of which opened in the mid-'70s, the no-uniform concept fit right in with the new Restaurant Renaissance philosophy.

According to owner Reed Apaghian, Astral Plane, with its menu of creative comfort food, means "all things to all people." So he didn't want his waitstaff to be automatrons.

"We try to allow for personal creativity," says Apaghian. "We do that in our restaurant in every other way, so it naturally follows suit. I ask the waiters and waitresses to wear something that they would wear if they were going out for a special occasion."

Eileen Plato, of longtime South Street-area favorite Judy's, says she's never had a dress code other than staff clothing be clean and not too revealing.

"In 1975 Philadelphia was still operating with Stouffers and Horn and Hardarts. Most of the restaurants on South Street were very different. What people wore was an extension of what the restaurant was trying to do."

"We're human beings. A uniform has absolutely nothing to do with service. It has more to do with the corporate mentality that runs the place."

At TGIFriday's the corporate mentality reigns supreme. The higher-ups at the restaurant's Dallas HQ wouldn't allow waiters, waitresses or managersto be interviewed for this story, and we couldn't photograph any of them near the bar (since they weren't bartenders).

The restaurant's mega-menu, filled with things like wings, mozzarella sticks and stacked-high sandwiches and salads, hasa design corollary in the signs, wheels and junk jumbled on the wall like an old-tyme general store, and in the bevy of buttons worn by the candy-striped waiters and waitresses (all of whom were extremely friendly and gracious, I might add).

Waiter Tony Johnson, wearing an attractive woven skull cap, sported the most unique selection of buttons: "ET Phone Home,""Every mother is a working mother," a Phillies button, and pins for Budweiser and Bass Ale.

"The fewest pins you were allowed to wear was three," said Sarah Dunn, onetime City Paper columnist, author of The Official Slacker Handbook and current staff writer for Murphy Brown. Dunn worked at TGIFriday's for ten months right after she graduated from Penn.

"You could choose your own pins, but I was always losing mine so I'd always wear the free ones about margarita specials, or 'Ask me about our desserts'... Let's just say I wasn't out on my off hours buying pins. Some people would really get into it — they'd have 500 pins on their suspenders. Those are the people still working there."

"We had to wear these red and white striped polo shirts that always ended up smelling like nachos. We only had two shirts and I was forever washing them. When I used to iron my shirt, my roomate would ask, 'Are you cooking something?' It was really gross."

In keeping with the day-of-the-week restaurant theme, Dunn left her job at Friday's to work at the uniform-free Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

"The downside to that is that you end up ruining normal clothes. But it's much more humane not to have a uniform."

Six Easy Pieces

"I won't wear lipstick," said waitress Therese Rodgers, tissuing off lipstick she's decided looks bad on her.

"They're supposed to wear lipstick," said Randi Sirkin, rolling her eyes. Sitting on tapestry-upholstered couches in the recently redecorated foyer of Striped Bass,Rodgers, hostess Daisy Lerner and waiter Paul Kimpart were showing off the new Striped Bass look.

"You get a lot more respect when you look and carry yourself well," said Sirkin. "I'm trying to tell them it's for them."

The "it" Sirkin was referring to is the line of versatile clothing designed for the servers by Manayunk-based designer Mariann Boston of Ma Jolie Atelier.

Almost everybody at Striped Bass is ecstatic about the elegant look: the customers, co-owner Neil Stein, manager Randi Sirkin, and Boston herself. Who's not happy? The waiters (or at least a few of them).

"No I don't like it at all," said Mazonne, at least fashion-conscious with hisCaesar haircut and extremely pointy sideburns. "I feel more comfortable in black pants and a white shirt. We have to get it drycleaned a lot. And I'm not into this non-collar thing."

While Striped Bass bought the line of clothing for the staff, employees still have to pay for drycleaning.

"Not one woman wanted her measurements taken... and when we told them what their measurements were they all denied it," she laughed.

Hostess Daisy Lerner, who looked dazzlingly curvy in her bias-cut skirt and fitted jacket, was more enthusiastic.

"I like it because it gives us a couple of options. And black is my favorite color."

"The customers love it," said Sirkin. "People notice that their server looks really attractive. It's in keeping with everything at Striped Bass. It's quietly sophisticated, without being overdone."

Women are offered six pieces of lightly patterned rayon crepe in chocolate/black or black/white print and in solid black or white. The garments include a long equestrian jacket, long bias-cut skirt, palazzo trousers, a bias-fitted blouse, a vented top and a wrap top which can be worn layered and frontwards or backwards.

Men have their choice of tab-collared shirts in three different colors of antique Hunan pongee silk, as well as printed suspenders that match the women's design and 1940s-type pleated trousers in brown tencel rayon.

"I heard someone wore their outfit to the Best of Philly party," said Sirkin somewhat incredulously. Serving food and partying in the same get-up is generally not done.

"The clothes evolved after many conversations," said Sirkin. "Practicality changed things."

"Neil Stein approached us," said Nikki Boston, Mariann Boston's sister and the buying and marketing end of the Ma Jolie business. "It was his idea and concept. His vision was to look at designing a uniform for a restaurant as designing a collection."

For Stein, the idea of dressing up his staff was in keeping with his idea of continually upgrading Striped Bass, named the best new restaurant last year by Esquire magazine, a hot new restaurant by Bon Appetit and the hottest place in town by Town and Country. Travel and Leisure commented that no restaurant has made such a splash in the last decade.

"As we continue to do these new things we continue to get new customers... We've spent a lot of money on the new uniforms — I hate to call them uniforms..."

"Bert's coming in right now to arrange the fresh flowers," Stein nodded to a man carrying buckets of flowers, ready to arrange them in the huge center vases. "He knows that if the flowers aren't right I'll send him back."

The Black Pack

Dawn Wechsler, a 21-year-old hostess, is leaning on the curved bar wearing black low-slung jeans from Urban Outfitters and a tight black velvet shirt she bought during a trip to Miami. No, she says, make that South Beach.

On weekends, lines of sleekly dressed patrons wait to get inside this new restaurant that offers dishes such as fresh Vietnamese spring roll with crab stick, rice noodle and avocado, tuna carpaccio with house-made ginger-cured salmon and decadent Chocolate Martinis. Inside, the loud, clamoring crowd squeezesinto booths trimmed in red,with fixtures shaped like toothpick-speared olives hanging above their heads.

The Continental boasts one of the most stylish staffs in the city.Perhaps the black-only dress code is in keeping with the simple Quaker mentality that once characterized Old City. But the end result is more Central Park West than Independence Mall.

Owner Stephen Starr, dressed sportily in jeans and a gray t-shirt, says he screens waiters and waitresses for their style quotient.

"I just said, look, wear black. Nothing faded or ripped... I hire people that are very fashionable to begin with. I can tell from just speaking with them they have a sense of style. A lot of them are models."

Red-Headed Jena Bender is a model for Vox Pop when she's not plopping olives into vodka. Today she's dressed in a shiny black Vox Pop halter top and pants. She's also been known to slip into DKNY.

Like most of the waitresses here, digging through her closet for black clothes wasn't a problem.

"It's very versatile," says Iris Kastler, wearing a black dress from (once again) Urban Outfitters and black Mary Janes. "I mean, how many black clothes do you own?" she asks rhetorically.

John Bonas, a sandy-haired Melrosian bartender, says he owns a dozen black t-shirts. It's quite a change from his last job at Rock Lobster, where the dress code was white shirts and white shorts.

Sitting at the bar planning the night's menu, chef Bradley Bartram recalls with fondness a slight diversion from the black pack.

Starr smiles with supreme satisfaction during the photo shoot. "What a good-looking staff," he sighs.

And a barback putting salt and pepper shakers on the tables shouts out, "Oh my god, it's a Robert Palmer video."

"One of the biggest comments we get is, 'How did you get such an attractive staff?'" says Starr. "We have Dr. Julius Newman on staff," he jokes.

But Starr says he wanted a staff that wasn't necessarily beautiful (though they are), but "interesting looking."

Dress to Serve

What kinds of sartorial issues did Mariann Boston consider when designing for Striped Bass' servers?

"We had to design pieces to fit a lot of different bodies," said Boston in the upper level cafe area of Ma Jolie Atelier, the elegant Manayunk clothing store she owns with sisters Desi and Nikki Boston.

A Botticelliesque beauty with pale skin and red lips and long black hair, Boston wore a work of her own that reflects the style seen at Striped Bass. A subtle floral pattern, Italian fabric, clean fluid lines and deep color.

"Before, they were dressed in black trouser and white shirt. Their tie was their only mark of individuality. They looked like every other bistro in the city."

Boston said she looked at the marble in the columns and the Oriental tapestries in the atrium for inspiration.

"I really looked at the space. The interior is made of mixed prints, the upholstery and the carpet are mixed prints, so I mixed the colorationsand patterns as well."

"Until I realized dirt was an issue, even in a fancy restaurant... Once we talked to the staff about how much function needed to be a part of the design, the color got darker."

The mobility of the bartenders was another important factor — nothing fussy, nothing hanging over dishes. Stein and Boston wanted a long sexy skirt, but instead of something narrow, Boston created a fluid bias-cut skirt for better movement.

Boston walked the staff through how the outfits would be worn, and they gave her feedback.

Nevertheless, Boston's trademark look — sophisticated fluid lines, layered Italian fabrics, simple patterns — fits in with Striped Bass' ever-evolving haute couture cuisine.