Minnesota native and stylist to Hollywood stars dishes on Prince and fashion

Chaise Dennis grew up on Minneapolis’ North Side, descending from a fashionable family. His great-grandmother Bernadette Anderson was Prince’s unofficial foster mom, and several of her children were the Purple One’s bandmates and tailor.

Dennis launched his career as a personal stylist at Nordstrom Mall of America, wrote a lifestyle column for Insight News and hosted a fashion radio show for KMOJ (89.9 FM). After moving to Los Angeles, he started styling celebrities for red carpets and magazines, including actor Edward Norton (for premieres of the Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown”) and Apple CEO Tim Cook (gracing the cover of Variety).

We checked in with Dennis after he dressed Tramell Tillman of “Severance” in a custom, white-on-white tuxedo for his best supporting actor Emmy win. Dennis shared what it’s like to style Hollywood stars and how Minnesotans can up their fashion game. (This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

Am I pronouncing your name right, rhyming it with “place”?

You’re saying it right. My mom confused everyone with the “i.” Everyone’s under the assumption that it’s going to be like “chaise lounge.” [Excuses himself to take a call from Tillman.]

Was Tramell having a fashion emergency?

[Laughs] No, we’re prepping for three big events and they’re all kind of back-to-back-to-back. So we’re just coordinating logistics, because he’s filming “Spider Man” and timing and everything is all over the place.

The FAIR School Crystal [a fine-arts magnet for middle schoolers] was the first place I really discovered a love for all things arts and potentially entertainment. Theater was the first thing I fell in love with, and then, of course, when you’re in theater, you put on costumes.

And having hip family members didn’t hurt.

My family does have some legendary allure behind them. My great-grandma [Bernadette Anderson] had a street named after her last year and she’s kind of an icon of Minneapolis. She raised her six kids along with Prince, so my uncle André [Cymone] and Prince created all of the incredible music of the late ’70s in her basement. I felt like I’ve had them to look to stylistically. As well as my grandma and my grandpa, who were models in Minneapolis — she was a Miss Black Minnesota.

And your great aunt Sylvia Loveless-Amos helped Prince turn his sketches into his singular, flamboyant couture?

She’s an unsung hero. If you look at all of the imagery from the late ’70s, early ’80s, when the Minneapolis sound traveled nationwide, all of the looks had been designed by her, from creative direction to fabrication. Today, I look at mood boards and I see collections that come down the runway and Prince is a constant reference.

My first client was Ronen Rubenstein, an actor who was on “911: Lone Star.” We grew together because he was a fairly new actor, and I was a brand-new stylist. That’s what’s been beautiful about our partnership: If we’re given crumbs, we make something special from it.

I’ve received invitations requesting “business professional with a nod to cocktail.” Can you translate the foreign language of dress codes?

We had gotten a brief for an event before the Emmys that was “smart casual,” and I was like, “What the hell is smart casual? What does that mean?”

Minnesotans aren’t known for our style. How can we up our game?

Funny enough, Minnesota and Midwest style transfers over to big cities more than we realize. I talk to my peers, and they love their Minnetonka moccasins. I always say, you never need to follow a trend. Just find what you love and add to that, which can be as simple as finding the cohesive piece that transforms your whole wardrobe.

The big hype in style is vintage and archive shopping, and I think you can really do a lot with little money. So just investing in those quality pieces, repurposing your pieces. And also tailoring. That’s one thing not enough people realize. It costs an extra few dollars to take it to an expert who can literally take it in to your precise measurements.

What if we want to be stylish and also stay warm?