Election count sketch: Like cross-dressing, cross-community voting is a minority taste in Northern Ireland, writes Frank McNally in Belfast.
But the extent to which the electorate was prepared to experiment on Wednesday might yet decide whether the Belfast Agreement can be saved when the last seats are filled.
As it was last night, the benefits of an open-minded approach to fashion were obvious. Sinn Féin, traditionally the more macho of the nationalist parties, discovered its feminine side years ago and has been borrowing the SDLP's clothes ever since.
Sadly for the latter party, the stuff looks better on the leaner, republican figure, and the Shinners were yesterday confirmed as Northern nationalism's preferred model. Similarly, on the unionist side, the DUP has been cleaning out David Trimble's wardrobe of late. The combination of traditional, below-the-ankle Paisleyism, with a tendency to show just enough leg to nationalism to make things interesting, has also proved popular.
The big issue last night was whether, amidst all the sartorial confusion, the UUP and SDLP would break the final taboo and swap their cast-off preferences to preserve David Trimble's precarious position as the leader of unionism.
One thing was obvious. The gang of four was tightening its grip on Northern politics, and everybody else was nowhere. There were no individual count announcements in Belfast's King's Hall, with election officials emerging from the count centre periodically to write the figures on a wall-mounted billboard.
And for the smaller parties the writing on the wall was grim. Not that they had any seats there to begin with, but West Belfast summed up their fate.
The Alliance Party managed all of 75 votes, as the combine harvester of Sinn Féin's election machine swept ahead in search of five of the six seats. The SDLP's Joe Hendron - once the local MP - couldn't finish in the top half-dozen yesterday.
But when the republicans' vote management fell just short, it was - typically - the DUP that slipped through the gap.
This was proportional representation, but not as we know it in the Republic. There were no tallying operations. The media were not admitted to the counts, only to a draughty annexe, where those lucky enough to have seats hung on to them as grimly as any candidates.
There were no counts, officially, only "stages", and percentage transfers saw the DUP pick up 0.09 of a preference from Sinn Féin's Gerry Kelly. However confused Irish journalists were, it was nothing to the bewilderment of some British ones, as they stared at the wall in blind incomprehension.
Raucous DUP cheers from the count centre last night greeted the election of another woman, when Diane Dodds - wife of Nigel - took the final seat in West Belfast.
This confirmed another trend in Northern politics; the DUP husband-and-wife team (Iris and Peter Robinson blazed the trail). And maybe it also edged closer the possibility of another marriage: a shotgun version between Paisleyism and Sinn Féin.