NY Times Style Section "Taking Fashion to the Streets" By RUTH LA FERLA ...In Chicago, at the thrumming monthly antiques fair and adjacent Indie Designer market in the West Loop, Jennifer Lynn was equally rapt. Trawling among the batik ponchos, sculptured straw hats, doggie couture and embroidered T-shirts, Ms. Lynn, a 34-year-old homemaker from Milwaukee, zeroed in on a hand-crocheted shrug with an elaborate cobweb design for $75. "I love having things that other people don't, especially if the price is right," she said, reaching for her wallet. "If a thing is special, I'm willing to travel to find it." A questing sensibility is prompting bargain seekers by the thousands, tourists and locals alike, to visit the hectically colorful street bazaars popping up like ragweed in urban centers from New York to Los Angeles. Amid the predictable detritus of bong pipes and CD's, there are original and surprisingly stylish clothing, jewelry and handbags to be unearthed, often the work of talented fashion young bloods who dream of becoming the next Zac Posen or Marc Jacobs. That may be a distant goal, but for buyers with a hungry eye for style, this is designer shopping where you don't have to be buzzed inside. Whether the street bazaars are roofed or haphazardly propped up under open skies, they are a magnet to consumers put off by the high prices, chilly formality and forbidding chic of more conventional boutiques. "Shoppers who like fashion are not intimidated by this format," said Alex Pabon, the manager of Emerge NYC, a new brick-and-mortar market at 65 Bleecker Street in downtown Manhattan. Street markets have an energizing effect on the fashion establishment as well. Designers including Tommy Hilfiger and Gianfranco Ferré have been spotted at Emerge, Mr. Pabon said. "Whether they are buying or just browsing, they want to see what this generation of designers is up to." Not a street fair in the strictest sense, Emerge is housed in a 3,500-square-foot space at street level, an interactive place where visitors can watch some 65 designers pinning patterns or stringing beads, who are drawn by the minimal overhead - rents from $450 a month for a glass showcase to $2,500 for a makeshift boutique - and the direct contact with the public. "Part of the fun of showing here is the chance to get outside of your studio, to make something and see a customer actually put it on," said Kareen Smith, an exhibitor and a knitwear specialist in her 30's. Watching customers slip into her hand-stitched sweaters, made mostly from recycled cashmere or wool (priced from about $170 to $500), she added, "This way you see your designs come to life, and sometimes your customer becomes your newfound friend." Erika and Monika Simmons of Chicago, 32-year-old twins who are dancers and models - they twist and shimmy on iPod's ubiquitous billboards - honed their fashion skills at home and developed their label, Double Stitch, at street fairs and trunk shows affiliated with stores in their South Side neighborhood. "We got our start at little festivals," Erika Simmons recalled with a laugh, "by inviting 500 of our closest friends." Double Stitch has been a fixture at the Chicago Indie bazaar since the market's inception last May, which has proved an invaluable merchandising classroom. "We learn something every month, and we try to improve on everything we feel wasn't together," Monika Simmons said. When, for instance, they found few takers for their street-grazing, hand-crocheted evening dresses, they replaced them with more versatile wrap tops, shrugs and tunic dresses ($50 to $400) that, in the parlance of the trade, are flying off the racks. That success is reflected in sales, which shot from a meager $100 a day at the market last spring to the more than $1,200 the twins had taken in by midmorning last Sunday. More tellingly, their crocheted designs have attracted a trickle of buyers from established Chicago boutiques, they said. For merchants, as for trophy hunters, exhibitors' originality is a drawing card. "Fashion is so much mass-produced, so much made in China; people need an option," said Sally Schwartz, an organizer of the Chicago Antiques Fair and Indie Market. Mr. Pabon of Emerge said, "Shoppers want something they can relate to personally, something they can experiment with and identify as a discovery." In such a low-cost, low-risk environment, designers too are free to experiment, turning out items that reflect market trends, and a few that inspire them. Among the attractions at Emerge last week were Missoni-like multicolored tunics ($85) by Lois Eastlund, calf-length swing coats fashioned from Moroccan tapestry fabrics ($600) by Heidi O'Donnell, and chunky beads made from bits of coral and sponge interspersed with gold and crystal ($200) from Lauren Wimmer, a sophisticated alternative to the nutlike beads ubiquitous at many sidewalk stalls. Ronaldus Shamask, a New York designer, said there were times when he felt exhilarated by his rambles through Manhattan's funkier sidewalk bazaars. "You always find something unexpected," he said, "something that fuels your creativity." Meccas to style seekers, street fashion bazaars are disparaged in some quarters as an urban blight. Conventional shopkeepers have little use for their haphazard appearance or the raffish traffic they attract, said Harriet Fields, the executive director of the NoHo NY Business Improvement District. From the merchant's point of view, they are an eyesore, she said. She acknowledged, however, that a market like the parking lot bazaar on Broadway in NoHo, which is anchored on the north by Tower Records and on the south by an Office Depot, can bring diversity and vitality to many urban neighborhoods. "It creates the feeling that all kinds of things are happening," Ms. Fields observed, "all different things in a melting pot, creating excitement and stimulating sales." Chaotic displays, pungent smells, milling crowds and the suffocating heat of August's dog days could not keep shoppers away from Manhattan's kaleidoscopic Howard Street market last Friday afternoon. "Every pay period, I'm here," confided Kathleen James, 50, a day care manager who had stumbled onto a cache of sparkling, envelope-sized evening bags at the market on Howard and Broadway and was considering a purchase. "You can't beat the bargains," she said. Kristen Naczi, 15, who was visiting with her mother from Marcellus, N.Y., was ecstatic to discover that her weekly allowance just about covered the purchase of a slouchy apple-green-tinted bag ($14) and a pair of shades ($5). "Designer things are nice," Ms. Naczi said, "but I can never afford them." Tiffany Flores, a 28-year-old nurse from Chicago, was scouring the market for novelties. "There's a lot of stuff here that you can't get back home," Ms. Flores said, without taking her eyes off a pair of Chinese-embroidered Mary Jane slippers she wanted for herself. She was searching, too, somewhat distractedly, for a gift to take back to her sister. What might she like? "I don't know," Ms. Flores said, too absorbed by the process of getting and spending to give the matter much thought. "I guess she'll take anything pink."