Fashion shows never start when they're supposed to, and this one is no exception. We're on Latin American time, and south of the Rio Grande, 11 p.m. is apparently the new 9 p.m. My friend Adolfo Urey hands me a drink, and I settle into my seat along the T-shaped catwalk draped in pristine white.

Urey is one of El Salvador's most sought-after hairstylists and makeup artists, and something of a celebrity in his country. We met during a fashion shoot I'd been covering on assignment. When I showed up wearing a hot-pink straw gaucho hat that I'd picked up in a hotel lobby for last-minute sun protection, Urey quickly nicknamed me Miss Canada. Several smart cocktails later, a camaraderie bloomed as exotic to me as the tropical flowers fringing the back yard of the upscale women's salon and boutique in which we're now sitting. It's owned by another popular stylist, Adrian Romero, who worked on the shoot too. An outdoor fashion show is about to take place. Adrian's business partner, designer José Dominguez, is showing his new collection.

It's mid-December, when evenings in the capital city of San Salvador are almost perfect. The daytime, though, can get pretty hot. You peer from the air-conditioned comfort of your car””windows shut tight and doors locked to keep out the crime””at giddy and abundant Christmas décor distorted by wiggly waves of heat. Walking the streets, every time you turn around, a plastic Virgin or an armed guard stares you in the face.

This festive time of year must be a bit of a drag for the 52 percent of Salvadorans who live on less than US$2 a day, women serving jail sentences of up to 30 years because they had abortions, or gay people forced to keep their identities hidden for fear of social ostracization or worse.

Urey came out here as a very young man, quite publicly, and in drag. In the early 1980s he was crowned Miss Gay El Salvador by patrons of Scape, the main gay bar in San Salvador. “My brother wanted to kill me,”  Urey told me one night over drinks in a hotel bar, and he didn't mean it figuratively.

We were in a sleepy, fantastically beautiful 500-year-old Spanish colonial town an hour-and-a-half drive from San Salvador. Suchitoto saw some of the worst fighting during El Salvador's civil war from 1980 to 1992, in which about 80,000 people were killed. Most of them were innocent civilians caught in the crossfire, and most of the killing was done by the right-wing government's CIA–trained death squads. Urey's brother was one of their colonels.

“Before he got a chance to kill me, he was shot and killed by left-wing guerrillas,”  Urey stated matter-of-factly, as though this sort of thing happens every day. Which, for 12 years, it did.

By no means did the end of the war end the widespread poverty here. On an amble by myself through the dirt-poor side streets of Suchitoto, children crowded around to gawk and giggle at the gringo in a pink hat. Most of them wore American-sports-team or movie T-shirts. No one begged. When I snapped a photo of four grinning young boys, one of them flashed the peace sign.

The dozen or so kids scavenging through the garbage cans at a fashion?-shoot location on a nearby farm weren't quite so cheerful. Occasionally one of them would break into a smile and exclaim excitedly when they found a water bottle with some liquid still in it.

Back at the fashion show, archaic laws, social inequities, and death squads fade into a larger-than-life Kylie Minogue. The disco diva preens on a giant screen at the end of the runway. They're playing one of her concert videos while the local paparazzi set up and audience members slowly sift in, mingling as they munch on mango-and-grilled-meat skewers and toss back highballs.

A little girl in a puffy white party dress scrambles onto the catwalk and runs back and forth. Soon she's joined by other children. You don't usually see kids at North American fashion shows, but here they're included in everything, and they're not shy.

As Kylie continues to coo and vamp, Urey and Romero take me backstage, where a group of grade-school tykes and tweens from a local modelling school are dressed up like wild animals. A seminaked young man wears a stuffed, plush-toy snake around his neck. Dresses in wonderful, exotic prints drape the models and hang from the racks. Tonight's theme is “My Africa” .

The designer had to go elsewhere for inspiration because there is hardly any wildlife left in El Salvador. I brought this up with a Salvadoran production assistant named Lisa when we were on the shoot, gazing at the forested hills surrounding Suchitoto. Why hadn't I seen any animals, I wondered aloud. No iguanas, no parrots, no monkeys or snakes. “They've all been eaten [by people],”  said Lisa, as if the answer were obvious.

Up on the screen, Kylie Minogue beams and gushes as she thanks her adoring fans, and the lights dim. Children emerge from behind, crawling and snarling like jungle cats on the prowl for food. They slowly make their way up the runway, accompanied by African drumbeats and caught in the crossfire of exploding flashbulbs. They're supposed to look mean and ferocious, but some of the kids can't help giggling. After all, they know it's make-believe.

ACCESS: El Salvador has one of the highest homicide rates in the world, but small towns outside the main city of San Salvador are relatively safe. Tourists are advised not to walk around alone in the city and not to drive on rural highways at night. You can hire your own security guard for about US$20 a day. (The country recently adopted the U.S. dollar as its currency.) The Spanish colonial town of Suchitoto is a must-see. San Salvador has one gay bar for men worth visiting, Scape, at Centro Comercial Juan Pablo Segundo, local 315C. Homosexuality is legal in El Salvador, but there is still widespread homophobia.