Bridget Pedgrift, owner of Bored on Board, agrees. 'This is a chance for all us traders to meet up', she says. Like the other shopkeepers, Bridget has persuaded her shop assistants, family and friends to cast aside their shyness, and model clothes from her collection. Shine Holistic, the local salon, will help with hair and make-up. Bored on Board, followed by a striking display from Red (giant feather head-dresses, off-the-shoulder party frocks).

Even Two Wheels Good, a bike shop, is in on the act. Tim and Zoe Slade, a leggy sister and brother act, cruise past the audience in their bicycle helmets with haute-couture attitude. 'I've never modelled professionally', admits Tim later, bashfully. 'But it has been suggested to me'. He is followed by similarly shapely models from Sunstone gym, cavorting down the runway in slinky sportswear.

Despite all the glitz on offer, most male eyes are trained on Roseanne's section of the show. Indeed, there is an audible intake of breath when four females clad in lacy black undergarments hit the runway. How did Roseanne persuade her staff to model bras and designer corsets? 'It was a case of egging everyone on', she smiles, mischievously.
But if male eyes were on stalks, the women's are more so for the show's surprise finale. Four of Stokey's finest firemen, decked out in full uniform, stride past hollering girls to the beat of You Sexy Thing. Two minutes later, they are back, in nothing but their undies. 'We're here to talk about health and safety', one of them later tells our correspondents. 'Do you think I could make it in the fashion business, though?'

After the show, actress Zoe Lucker ( of the TV series Footballers' Wives) draws the raffle and the audience feasts on food, agreeing that the night is an unqualified success. Roseanne's natural charm and enthusiasm seem to have infected everyone. 'This is the kind of thing that makes me proud to live in Stoke Newington', says Linda Hall, a local massage therapist. 

And the money raised: over £5,300. Could this be an annual event? I ask Roseanne the following morning. 'Lots of people have suggested it', she says, laughing. 'Let me get rid of the hang-over first.'

Images from The Stoke Newington Gala fashion show are now online

Record Business

By Richard Boon

'It was fun for a while', says a disenchanted Tony Fischetti, on the closure of his second-hand music store Totem after 10 years of trading on Church Street, once used to having customers come from as far afield as Japan and Russia to check his wares. First attracted to the area because of its 'bohemian character', he cites parking regulations, the spread of restaurants and, related, rent hikes for his loss of trade: 'It became the wrong location. I survived a rent increase 18 months ago, but I couldn't afford another based on restaurant floor space rates.'

But there's more. Having been a musician himself, Tony remarks that, 'Music is very different in our culture today. It used to be that music was a social reflection and had meaning. Even record deletions were banked as desirable later on. People now are spending money on non-durable commodities. Music once had a value.' Established as a shop for collectors, Totem was set up, in Tony's words, 'Not to be an insular shop, with just what I liked, but open to all record collections, and not a shop with stock that record companies dictate.' 

Totem also fell prey to a new phenomenon, linked to the internet downloads and private CD-burning of music which, you might think, were more of a concern for the mainstream industry. Enter: packaging theft.

As Khurram Aziz reported in a recent issue of Creative Week, surveying CD packaging design and quoting a spokesperson for HMV: 'It's never quite the same downloading the product as having the real thing... as people may appreciate the versatility of having the download, they'll still keep buying the physical product.'

Or stealing it - including CD inlays from Tony's display racks: 'I had 3 inlays for the Rolling Stones, Their Satanic Majesties Request, stolen in one Saturday afternoon.' How sad is that?

Not as sad, perhaps, as losing another Church Street retailer to the seemingly endless influx of places to be fed and watered and the greed of landlords killing the goose that once may have laid a golden egg. 

Totem: RIP - it was fun for a while.