PHOTO COURTESY OF THE O’NOIR FOUNDATION

The style and substance behind O’Noir Foundation, Christina Stein and Sidney Sokoloff, are bonafide fashion plates.

Several years ago, the pair met at a foodie event and immediately bonded over their love of local cuisine, black clothing and community service. In 2021, Stein, an image consultant, and Sokoloff, president and CEO of Specialty Group, formed The O’Noir Foundation, a nonprofit that raises money for LGBTQIA+-friendly organizations through events that epitomize good taste.

“I said, ‘I’m gay, you’re bi; let’s do something for the gay community that combines food and fashion,” says Sokoloff, a Pittsburgh Magazine 40 Under 40 Honoree in 2023. “‘Noir’ means ‘black’ in French, so what we came up with is very dark and dramatic. It’s like ‘Phantom of the Opera’ meets ‘Rupaul’s Drag Race’.”

O’Noir: The Experience is an annual five-course wine dinner where a course by a Pittsburgh chef is inspired by a local designer’s fashion piece. The fare and outfits are all black, and models strut their stuff while attendees dive into one-of-a-kind dishes. In essence, you are tasting what you’re seeing.

Through his family business, which focuses on helping people break into the restaurant and bar industry, Sokoloff has forged partnerships with a lot of Pittsburgh’s culinary masters I’ve written about at one point or another, including Kate Romane (Black Radish Kitchen), Rafael Vencio (the soon-to-open AmBoy Filipino Restaurant), Selina Progar (Eleven), Jacqueline and Nathan Schoedel (The Speckled Egg) and private chef Brandon Blumenfeld.

The event also honors an LGBTQIA+ community member who makes a difference, and the honoree chooses a charity to receive a donation on their behalf. (I’m proudly out of the closet, but that closet is filled with nothing but T-shirts, jeans and sneakers, so I was shocked to hear my name called as the aforementioned honoree at last year’s event. It was even more thrilling to drop off a $1,000 check to UPMC Children’s Hospital’s Division of Adolescent & Young Adult Medicine.)

PITTSBURGH MAGAZINE’S KRISTY GRAVER, THIRD FROM LEFT, WAS HONORED AT THE O’NOIR FOUNDATION EVENT LAST YEAR. | PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE O’NOIR FOUNDATION

Overall, 2023’s festivities generated $15,000 for SisTers PGH and Proud Haven. Stein and Sokoloff hope to raise $25,000 at this year’s sold-out soiree for Proud Haven and The Children’s Home & Lemieux Family Center.

Proud Haven was conceived in 2012 as a response to the crisis of homelessness among LGBTQIA+ youths, a situation that, due to the pandemic, has worsened.

Executive Director Lyndsey Stickler says the organization helps through creative problem-solving and progressive collaborations to serve an average of 75 to 100 youths and 150 adults per year, “but for anyone who is familiar with this work, more is always needed. The need is never-ending and with the state of the world then and today, and the tenuousness of the current political climate, this is still the case.”

The new QMNTY Center at 525 E. Ohio St. on the North Side, a joint project with Trans YOUniting, provides clothing, hygiene products and shelf-stable goods. HIV/STI testing is offered twice a week in partnership with Allies for Health + Well Being.

The facility also has a Banned Book Library filled with donated tomes and comics as well as a computer lab that is open to anyone who comes in and asks. Support is available for those searching for a job or housing.

Last year’s O’Noir donation helped Proud Haven plan holiday events, provide essential needs for the community and pay bills to keep the doors open and the lights on. The facility is always accepting toiletries, shelf-stable goods, seasonally appropriate clothing and grocery store gift cards.

If you didn’t snag a ticket to Friday’s event, online donations are accepted year-round. O’Noir also is working with The Warhol Academy on a documentary to raise awareness about the foundation and its mission, which includes the launch of an outdoor fundraising gala in 2025.

I’ve always considered myself a fashion victim, but Stein changed my perspective on style — and community service.

“It doesn’t have to make sense to other people, it just has to make sense to you,” she says. “That translates to what we are doing with the foundation. We take risks so other people can embrace their weird.”