Annie O'Neill, Post-Gazette photos "I think I have the gift of communicating to people in a gentle, kind, loving way that what they are wearing is not OK," says offbeat fashionista Monica Phillips, who owns the South Side consignment store Diva's By Monica. Click photo for larger image. THREE NIGHTS OF FASHION "Diva's and Friends: A Handmade Soiree -- A Tribute to Pittsburgh Fashion Design" will run from Friday to Sept. 9. There will be art, music and refreshments on three consecutive Friday nights at Future Tenant, 801 Liberty Ave., Downtown. Donations will be accepted at the door for this fashion art show. The opening reception, from 5 to 11 p.m. Friday, will feature work by designer Monica Phillips and pieces from Daisy Mae. Fashion shows will be held at 6 and 8 p.m., with music by Omega Love and tunes provided by DJ Dale Cooper and performances by Pillow Project Dance Company. On Sept. 2, the fashions of Little Black Dress in Shadyside will be displayed during a 7 p.m. show. Doors open at 6 p.m. The closing event, from 6 to 9 p.m. Sept. 9, will feature a 7 p.m. fashion show featuring iman B, music by Soma Mestizo and free food and drink. A fashion sale and fashion-inspired art sale will be held during regular gallery hours, noon to 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays.

Monica Phillips wakes up and puts on a kelly green shirt. But it isn't matching her mood, which is playful, so she changes into a black sleeveless sweater that she had ripped with scissors.

This plunging deconstructed shirt -- adorned with runners and a fishnet veil -- is not like anything you have seen. But somehow Phillips manages to pull it off.

Wanna buy it?

"Everything on my back is for sale," she says.

Phillips, 31, is a diva with a leonine tangle of brown curls and pink suede stilettos poking under jeans with gaping holes. She owns Diva's By Monica, a South Side consignment and hangout for fashionistas looking for a recycled find, an original piece of artwork -- and the warm quirkiness that is Monica.

She is sharing her vision of fashion as art at a show titled "Diva's and Friends: A Handmade Soiree -- A Tribute to Pittsburgh Fashion Design" at Future Tenant at 801 Liberty Ave., Downtown, Friday through Sept. 9. A recovering addict who has been clean for eight years, she is coordinating the show as a benefit for the South Side Counseling and Consultation, a nonprofit group that helps people without insurance get treatment for drug addiction, alcoholism and other problems.

The best place to discover her sassy style is inside her Carson Street store with billowing pink cloth on the ceiling and polka-dot painted chairs and clothing racks that curl into modern sculptures. You never know quite what you are going to find -- a $10 gently used shift or a $175 custom crocheted dress with the midriff exposed or a beaded purse from the '50s. You never know what is going to happen inside, either.

Leslie Codey, a loyal customer, walked in one recent Saturday to drop off a few things. Wearing a black sleeveless dress topped with a black sheer top, she was en route to a bridal shower.

"Honey, no," Phillips said in her soft-as-velvet voice. Cute, but not right for a shower.

Phillips slipped the black top off her and grabbed a white, red and green silky shirt off the rack that matched Codey's shoes.

With the deftness of a surgeon, Phillips ripped the front of the shirt with scissors.

"What are you doing?" Codey asked, cringing to the sound of ripping fabric. "What if it doesn't work?"

"It always works," Phillips said breezily.

Then Phillips threw the ripped striped shirt over Codey's black dress, tied the loose ends to make it into a midriff jacket and added green button earrings.

"Nice," said the other women in the store admiringly. "Much better."

Another Diva fashion moment is born.

"I thought I was fully clothed when I left the house," Codey said laughing but nonetheless happy with her two-minute makeover.

"I think I have the gift of communicating to people in a gentle, kind, loving way that what they are wearing is not OK," said Phillips, who is offended by the "brutal" methods of the stylists on the TLC makeover program "What Not to Wear."

Then Phillips walked up to a first-time customer and drooled over her big rectangular purse.

"Look at the bag. Now that is a bag," she swooned. "Who covets that bag? If you ever want to sell it to me ..."

The next moment, a fellow Carson Street merchant walked in the store to tell Phillips that there is a creepy man following her on the street. Phillips left the store unattended for 10 minutes to check it out. ("He is creepy," said Phillips, who advised a call to the police).

She's trusting with her customers. Instead of security tags, she has a sign in the dressing room that says: "To all my Divas. Please do not steal. Remember karma will get you. Plus it is evil."

Phillips is a fabric painter who creates brightly painted dresses and tops. She thrives on the creativity of chaos. Recently, she had trouble finding things because she lets Marci Ghering, the artist who paints the bejeweled chairs, rearrange the inventory. "It's fabulous," Phillips says of the ever-changing arrangement of her ever-changing inventory of funky clothes, jewelry and other artwork from 200 Pittsburgh artists.

She calls everyone "honey" without coming off as syrupy. Her fiercely loyal fans say she finds the beauty in every woman, no matter what age, body type or taste.

Stephanie Jingle models a dress painted by Monica Phillips. Phillips calls it her "Sleek Silver Racer" dress. Click photo for larger image.

"I go in there, and I am a Greek goddess," says Mary Grill, 43, of Bridgewater, N.J., who visits family in Pittsburgh. "I see her do that with all kinds of girls."

Grill works as an assistant to a personal shopper at Bloomingdale's and says she can't find a consignment store like Diva's -- high-quality but inexpensive -- in the New York area. "It shows you how forward-thinking she is. She is amazing."

She recently bought a $20 navy gown from Phillips -- only to have Phillips insist that she borrow a vintage Chanel necklace and bracelet because it would make the outfit.

"I can't take this," said Grill, who estimated the necklace's value at $500.

"I know you will ship it back," Phillips replied.

Phillips also counsels the young girls who come in wearing skimpy outfits to put some clothes on. She tells others such as 10-year-old Darien Costanzo, a Peters Township clotheshorse who calls herself "a little diva," to stay away from seductive clothes. Darien was eying a pair of high-heeled black boots longingly.

"You are so beautiful. It's OK to be your age," Phillips told her. "These are sexy boots. You can spend the rest of your life in sexy boots."

While clothes and art are her passion, Phillips is less enamored with the details of running a business.

"God, my desk. I hate it. I am good at selling clothes. I hate organization. I do not even get along with people who are organized."

Then there is her huge tan purse, nicknamed the "abyss" by friends who watch her pull out yoga refrigerator magnets, a serenity prayer stamp, two pairs of sunglasses, her bills, gobs of jewelry, smaller purses for money, lots of makeup (even though she doesn't wear much, but just in case), a camera, extra batteries for cameras, and on and on. "Yeah, it is a suitcase."

"I think it probably gets on people's nerves. 'Like, get it together, Monica. You have too much stuff.' I have a hard time throwing things away."

Which is why she opened her own store, the culmination of a retail career that began when she was a teenager growing up in Seven Springs. She had to wear green polyester "stick-to-you-ugh" skirts to Catholic school, so on weekends, she and her best friends would make their own fashion statements by ripping and painting clothes. At age 14, she began working in a local clothing store and never stopped working in retail.

A ski racer, she attended the University of Utah in Salt Lake City to be near the mountains. "I needed to be away from home. I needed to sow my oats and that I did."

Too well. She dropped out of college after developing a drug addiction. "I was a billion miles away from home. I rebelled for the first time. Those were the dark days."

She did things -- things she can't believe she did -- to feed her addiction. "That wasn't me."

Despite the turbulence of drugs, she found her calling out West. She worked at a high-end consignment shop and knew it was what she would someday do.

It took a few years to kick her drug habit. "Drugs took everything from me, but now I am clean."

In 1998, she started her retail career in Pittsburgh working at Adele's in Squirrel Hill and then became a sales associate at 40 Saville Row Clothes Makers of London, a high-end custom store.

She just happened to be walking down the street in Carnegie when she saw a little storefront for rent. "What a great storefront," she told the merchant who happened to be moving out. "You should take it. It's only $300 a month," the outgoing merchant told her.

Then, the landlord showed up. She gave him $100 out of her pocket, and impulsively, instantly, Diva was born in 1999. "I knew this was exactly what was supposed to happen."

The next year, she tripled her space by moving into the South Side, which attracts a younger, hipper crowd.

The merchant who makes a retching sound when she hears the name of a chain store can't let clothes be. She just has to paint them and rip them and fray the edges.

"Nothing goes uncut," she says. "I guess I am self-righteous. I believe I am making clothes better."