I can think of no article that is less relevant to my life (nor any lifestyle that is less achievable or, frankly, desirable), but I thought the concept was interesting. So here goes nothing.

An excerpt from the NYT story:

New York is the mother ship of possibility, a city where dreams are expected to come true. You need only look at the fashion show that goes on after dark, when getting dressed for a night out at a club means dressing for the dream. After some rough years for the industry following 9/11, clubs once again fill the city: fancy cocktail bars, Latin spots, wacky club-kid parties, big-box dance palaces, lounges filled with stylish groovesters or gay men.

It is easy to be flummoxed when considering outfits that will pass a doorman's head-to-toe inspection, especially when dress codes are mainly unstated. But an after-dark tour of about half a dozen popular clubs proved that their house styles can be decoded with a little study and a discreet debriefing of the doorman.

FREDERICK'S is a chic basement lounge in the shadow of Bergdorf Goodman on 58th Street, and the preferred look is just plain rich. "We wanted to create a place going back a few years when people took pride and made an effort," Frederick Lesort said of the club, his namesake. For women that means tend to your hair, and dress as though you already have the money, not as though you're looking for it. For men, suits are an obvious bet.

But the key look for men - expensive blazer, dress shirt, elegant shoes and jeans - suggests David Beckham and his "far too rich and good-looking to worry about anything" style.

"Up here you get a lot of nicely dressed people," Irv, a doorman for Mr. Lesort, said. "But it's more about what you bring to the place. In this ZIP code you'll always find people with style. But a bunch of well-dressed people with a bad attitude is a bad party."

Other insights:

"For men, no warm-up suits, sweat pants or gold chains unless you are a chart-topping rap star. For women I like to call it the Rule of Three: never show more than two of your areas. You can tastefully show some midriff and some leg, but hide your chest."

-- Wass, Marquee

"I haven't had sex in two and half years," said Aimee Phillips, 22, the studio manager of the downtown label Heatherette, who was at a Sunday night party at Hiro. Ms. Phillips's look - a strapless patchwork concoction nicked from a rack at work, white stilettos with knee socks and a Kabukilike design of glittering stones on the face - evoked a Japanese superhero dressed for a hillbilly ball.

THE BOYS ROOM and OPALINE If club-kid style evokes chastity in sacrifice to a style god, dressing with the opposite intention - pick up or lose out - has long been the domain of gay clubgoers. To fetishizers of such macho icons as blue-jeans-wearing cowboys and leather-clad bikers, the gay scene's newest look comes as a surprise: small-town America.