Chic: Baltimore

APPEARANCES CAN be deceiving. As the rest of Chic pumped out the urgent, staccato vamp to 'Stage Fright', Nile Rodgers, Alfa Anderson, Luci Martin and Bernard Edwards strutted onstage dressed to the nines. Between Rodgers' white cowboy-cut jacket and fringed black leather jeans, the exaggerated shoulders of the ladies' sophisticated retro look and Edwards' cream-colored, right-out-of-Gentleman's Quarterly suit, it was hard to miss what the Chic image was saying: this is high-fashion cool, the funk that never sweats.