Warning!: Vavoom Pinups may cause irreversible effects on your brain, and memory loss may occur. After the Vavoom team has its way with you, you may find yourself thinking, ‘Wait, Marilyn Monroe who?’That’s because Vavoom Pinups (vavoompinups.com), located at 2239 N. Kimball Ave. in Logan Square, isn’t a one-stop shop for a senior class portrait. Vavoom will dress you and doll you up for a photo shoot that aims to make you a twenty-first century Vargas vision (as long as you’re a lady-‘no boys allowed’ is strictly enforced).

All thanks to owner, founder and photographer for Vavoom Pinups, Heather Stumpf. The beaming businesswoman bounces around a studio teeming with books on burlesque and pinup portraits, proudly thumbing through her collection of vintage swimsuits and props. The exposed brick walls display some of her clients as ’40s and ’50s pinup masterpieces to set the war-era tone. But she can’t show off all her work in her apartment-turned-studio.

“Women have more confidence after the shoots, they approach things a little differently,” says Stumpf. “Women leave here, they start looking at the furniture in their homes like, ‘How would I pose on this?’ There’s an internal change that goes on in the women after this type of shoot.”

Experience is a key word that Stumpf continuously emphasizes in describing the Vavoom photo shoots. Stumpf and her team of retro hair and makeup masterminds promise “an empowering photo shoot experience for women.” And by the testimonials tacked up on the studio’s bulletin board, Vavoom’s shot of girl power serves clients long after they step back into the modern world.

Heather and her all-lady band of vintage vixen-izers take clients on a step-by-step journey through time to an era of mystery, sex appeal and real, hair-as-high-as-the-heavens glamour as soon as the door opens and they hear, “Hi, kitten!” And so the newfound curiosity to try dangling upside down off the edge of your apartment’s secondhand loveseat ignites.

You start the “photo shoot experience” by getting a studio tour and slipping into what Stumpf calls a “fabulous robe” to relax. In that silky little number, you’ll be guided to the hair artist chair where the hair stylist “sets you”-pins your hair up in big curlers to simulate how the women of the ’40s and ’50s would style their hair overnight. While in the retro curlers, you’ll get a full-face application by the makeup artist in vintage-appropriate fashion-a completely shine-free, matte look complete with the cherry red pouters, simple eyelids and optional false eyelashes. Then back to perfect your ‘do and wrap up the one to one and a half hour styling process.

As the music of the era whirls around the studio, you will pick one to four outfits from the collection of vintage swim gear and curve-flaunting, retro dresses. Stumpf then plays Tyra Banks during the shoot to coach you through flattering poses and teach you things like “how to hold a phone sexy.” During the one to two hours of photo-snapping, Stumpf makes sure to “keep the energy up, to keep [the client] from getting nervous” and to “make [the shoot] really intimate and fun.”

The success of each shoot (experience- and result-wise) is dependent on a woman being comfortable, and willing to try a pose that may initially feel ridiculous (like sticking out “the girls,” as Stumpf so charmingly refers to, well, “the girls”). According to Stumpf, the personalities of the staff help the women get there: “We hold your hand throughout the whole process.”

Stumpf carefully considers each client to make the experience as relaxed and worry-free as possible. As to not match a more reserved girl with something too daring, she takes into account personality, body type, what clients pick to wear and flexibility (“as weird as that sounds”) in choosing poses and props.

Despite the classic purpose of a pinup, it doesn’t take a significant other to want to flaunt it in some photos. Stumpf has shot single girls looking to celebrate accomplishments, document a chapter in their lives and pose with their pets and motorcycles. Vavoom also offers group packages for a girls’ night out, bachelorette or birthday party or any other excuse to go out and do something new with girlfriends.

Whether working the camera in large or small numbers, the clients must have a boastable comfort level for pinup-worthy photo results. That confidence is not required by the ladies to walk through the door, however.

“I’d say eighty to ninety percent of the women that do come in would never do something like this,” says Stumpf. “When I first opened, I was assuming I’d get all the Paris Hiltons, but all are the girls next door. It’s always that story.”

As Stumpf goes on to tell success stories of mousy hermits gone self-assured sidewalk-strutters, she can understand why the majority of Vavoom Pinups’ business comes in the form of conservative introverts.

“They get to be someone else; they get to play this alter ego of themselves,” Stumpf says. “Everybody wants to feel beautiful and wants to see themselves in that sort of way. We see a variety of ethnicities, ages, sizes of everything, and they all look gorgeous.

“We’re all sexy, beautiful and we all have ‘it.’ It just needs to be shaped.