What do you get when you join 1940s glamour with gorgeous three-part harmonies performed by three unrelated women who call themselves sisters?

Answer: the fabulous musical trio, The Puppini Sisters.

The Gay & Lesbian Times talked with the trio, comprising namesake Marcella Puppini, Kate Mullins and Stephanie O’Brien, about how the women formed a musical family that has drawn comparisons to the 1940s girl group The Andrews Sisters. We also chatted about the newly released, Rise and Fall of Ruby Woo (the titular “Ruby Woo” is a nod to the group’s favorite MAC Cosmetic lipstick).

The English roses are far from being considered shrinking violets, though that’s how they’re described on their MySpace profile.

Puppini is “the quirky Italian with a slightly morbid side,” Mullins, “the feisty blonde with a penchant for using stilettos as weapons,” and O’Brien, “the pouty redhead who can out-camp the whole of SoHo.”

So how are the women most like sisters?

“In the way that we argue!” O’Brien joked.

“I don’t think we’re like sisters at all,” Mullins chimed in, also kidding. “Well, we love each other. No, but the thing is, we work as a team very much so, and I think that’s kind of a nice bond.”

After meeting at London’s Trinity College of Music, the threesome, despite varied musical tastes, developed a friendship, and found themselves drawn to the allure of the 1940s retro look and sound for their group.

“I got together with Steph and Kate, and all three of us are so different, as well, in influences and what we’ve been listening to,” Puppini said. “Kate was a metal fan, and Steph is a classical and a ’70s diva fiend, and I’m into sort of dark, alternative cabaret. And, I even had a gay club hit, a few years before. So, completely different influences; and it just seemed to be the perfect trio of people to start a venture like this together.”

After seeing the 2003 award-winning animated film Belleville Rendez-vous, which featured cartoon-ish Andrews Sisters-type women, the trio’s image was solidified.

“We all studied jazz and we all have a passion for old Hollywood, so this was something that all of us had known and loved before,” Puppini said. “Immediately, I thought this was the perfect thing to start – because there’s a music angle and there’s a fashion angle with it as well, and I loved the idea of discovering all of this 1940s styling, so I relished the opportunity to dress up all the time.”

After The Puppini Sisters officially formed in 2004, the group amassed a cult-like following on the club scene, and landed a record deal when the likes of Robert De Niro, Ozzy Osbourne and Prince Charles took notice.

“Meeting Prince Charles was really quite funny, because we hadn’t expected to meet him,” Puppini said. “After doing a performance at The Royal Variety Performance, we got to meet him. And, he was going through the whole line, speaking to all of these big celebrities and then he came to us. And at first he just said, ‘Oh hello, hello, hello,’ shook our hands and was on his way.

“And then he stopped and looked back and said, ‘Oh, it’s you,’ and he came back and talked to us again and said, ‘I have your CD, I was given it for my birthday, and I think it’s rather splendid.’ It was quite the funny experience to have and quite surreal.”

“And I think he was quite intrigued, because we had so much cleavage on show with the dresses we were wearing,” Mullins said. She joked, “And what with the light reflecting off our cleavage and his bald spot, I think everyone was very blinded!”

The clip of the trio meeting Prince Charles is on the group’s MySpace profile.

The Puppini Sisters are known for their tongue-in-cheek approach to recreating such musical gems as “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” “Mr. Sandman,” and “Jeepers Creepers” with a pitch-perfect approach.

“It’s very exciting to actually be able to bring back something that was so fabulous in its heyday,” Mullins said. “But, also, the world that we live in today, which is full of Timbaland’s and Beyonce’s, and that hip-hoppy kind of thing; it’s really exciting to be at the forefront band in that revolution.”

The trio has also created unique renditions of contemporary harmonious fare on their first CD, Betcha Bottom Dollar, including Blondie’s “Heart of Glass,” Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights,” The Smiths’ “Panic,” and Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive.”

And on “The Rise and Fall of Ruby Woo,” the women have done it again, masterfully covering “Crazy in Love” by Beyonce, “Walk like an Egyptian” by The Bangles, and “Spooky” (which was originally performed by the 1960s group Classics IV, and later by Dusty Springfield).

Though the ladies have never received feedback from contemporary artists about the inimitable style they brought to the previously recorded material, Mullins said they were honored by a particular accolade.

“We have had a lot of feedback from the fans of all of these artists, like Kate Bush and Morrissey,” Mullins said. “Morrissey fans are kind of renowned for being very, very picky, and they really like our version of ‘Panic.’ And, we’re actually featured on the Web site called ‘the worst Kate Bush covers ever,’ and we’re featured as being one of the good ones. So, we took that as quite a compliment”

And, there are other modern day songs out there that the Sisters are considering for future projects.

“Somebody suggested ‘Milkshake’ by Kelis,” Mullins said. “Also, we really want to do ‘Copacabana.’”

Puppini would like to put their spin on the 1983 Bonnie Tyler tune, “Total Eclipse of the Heart.”

And being the 1970s diva-phile she is, O’Brien said her dream project would be, “a Donna Summer medley. We’ve all fallen in love with ‘MacArthur Park’ – we love that song! And we’re getting asked to do a lot of DJ-ing sets back home in London, and that’s probably our theme at the moment. It’s the song we play when we get onto the turntables and we really love it.”

(The ladies love it so much, in fact, that they serenaded us with an impromptu version of the song, which promptly made us feel giddy as school girls.)

For now, the delightful dames are content having penned their own tunes for The Rise & Fall of Ruby Woo. Each Sister has put her own stamp on the tunes “Soho Nights” (written by O’Brien), “Jilted,” “And She Sang,” “I Can’t Believe I’m Not A Millionaire” (written by Puppini) and “It’s Not Over (Death Or The Toy Piano)” (written by Mullins).

“We were always going to do that, we were always going to move towards writing,” Puppini said. “But, we had to go through the process of discovering how the arrangements were crafted in the beginning.

“So, for the first album, we actually did transcribe a lot of Andrews Sisters original arrangements, and then we moved on to doing our own original arrangements. It was the next obvious move to make. It’s quite a tricky thing to write the three-part harmony – it’s one thing to write a song, and it’s one thing to write a song for three-part harmony.”

The future holds a great deal of promise for these broads from abroad. They won’t stray too far away from the familiar path they’ve blazed. Mullins mulled the group’s future projects.

“Up next, I don’t know … more originals, more covers, bigger hair, bigger dresses, more lipstick!”

“Our own style gets stronger and stronger,” Puppini said. “We now no longer sound like a 1940s band, we sound like a contemporary band that takes inspiration from the 1940s. We’ve created our own thing, which is amazing.”