The Puppini Sisters: Britain's Retro-Glam Sister Act

Kate Mullins, the saucy blonde from the British swinging sister act The Puppini Sisters, says the trio got their first big break performing at posh gay clubs in London.

"I don't know, there may be something camp about three girls in red lipstick singing Andrews Sisters songs," she jokes when asked why the GLBT community is so smitten with their retro-glam mystique.

"We started off in gay clubs so we sort of tailored our act to that audience," Mullins says, phoning from her home in East London. "Or maybe it's because we've covered a lot of gay anthems like the Kate Bush song and The Smiths."

It's the Puppini Sisters' haunting, three-part harmonic rendition of Bush's "Wuthering Heights" that earned the girl group--Mullins, Stephanie O'Brien and founder Marcella Puppini--entrance into London's elite gay music scene.

"We were determined to get this one particular gig at a really grand gay night in South London," the 22-year-old vocalist recalls. "The club is extremely creative and highbrow. It's definitely selective and if the crowd there doesn't like you, believe me, they'll let you know."

Marcella's husband, who pitched The Puppini Sisters to the club's promoter, was trying to earn the girls a coveted onstage slot in the show. In an attempt to woo over management, he promised that his wife's group had recently crafted a unique take of "Wuthering Heights."

"He was completely lying," she remembers. "We actually had two weeks to write the arrangement, learn it and choreograph it for this highly discerning gay crowd. They actually loved it."

The Bush cover became a hit off their first album, "Betcha Bottom Dollar." Released late last year, The Puppini Sisters' second CD "The Rise and Fall of Ruby Woo" is a tongue-in-cheek reference to MAC Cosmetics' "Ruby Woo" lipstick.

While Mullins admits that the three vocalists are not technically related, she says their disparate personalities--and voices--somehow mesh.

"We're three very different personalities and I really don't know how it all works," she responds with a thick British accent. "I'm definitely the bossy one, Marcella is the quirky, crazy one and Stephanie is a gay man trapped in a straight woman's body," she adds.

"We're three very different personalities and I really don't know how it all works"Founded two years ago at Trinity College of Music in London, The Puppini Sisters' look and feel was inspired by the animated flick "Belleville Rendez-vous," a satire that pokes fun at stereotypes and clichés spread about French and Americans.

While Mullins confirms that The Puppini Sisters' show is, in essence, a post-modern farce poking fun of the WWII era, she says the group embraces the glamorous aspects perpetuated by pin-up icons like Marilyn Monroe, Jean Harlow and Betty Grable.

"Women in the '30s and '40s were objectified for the right reasons ... because they were really feminine," she responds. "Women today are objectified in a completely different way. You have ladies falling out of cabs drunk at 3 a.m. and getting their picture taken. You would never see that back then."

Mullins continues, "In a world where the media is so invasive, it's difficult for women to maintain a feminine, put-together image. With our act, we would like to try."

When it comes to the trio's admiration for The Andrews Sisters, Mullins says she would make a few stylistic changes to the whole "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" aesthetic.

"They were really mucking in the war effort back then," Mullins concludes. "Maybe we would too if we lived in that era--but we would do it in stiletto heels."