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BRIAN ORLOFFIf a school uniform is in your future, you can still do it with style.
Uniform-saddled kids bemoan their condition, but think of the poor uniforms.
The crisply folded shirts, those pleated skirts, they look positively uptight in department stores, hanging next to lacy, low-cut halters and cargo jeans with more pockets than two pairs of uniform khakis combined. It's as if they're crying from the racks, "Rescue me! I'm boring!"
Crafty kids know a thing or two about accessorizing. No kid wants to look the same, even if everyone in class is wearing identical outfits. As parents and kids let out a collective sigh, resigning themselves to yet another back-to-school shopping season, take solace in knowing that if you're destined for a uniformed year, you're not alone. And there are ways to spruce up that bland polo shirt without getting in trouble.
Eden Suchar, 14, a recent graduate of the Pinellas County Jewish Day School in Clearwater, has paid her uniform dues. Starting Gibbs High School in St. Petersburg in August, Suchar awaits her fashion freedom, saying, "I'm really different from the other people in my class, so it's going to be a big break and I get to express myself in what I wear."
As a former uniform wearer, Eden offers tips based on her experience.
"(I wore) different socks and shoes, whatever looked different from the rest of the people. I would wear lots of bracelets and I'd do my hair differently and I would also wear two different colored socks. I wore different shoes everyday," she says.
Eden describes her style sensibilities as "more Gothic/alternative outside of school" and says that her desire to stand out has occasionally sparked a remark from a teacher.
"I did get yelled at by (a teacher) for wearing two different colored socks. She said it was against the dress code and it didn't look nice," Eden says, though nothing more came of the confrontation. Still, it's better to study the rules - uniform or not, nearly all schools have a dress code - to avoid the fashion faux pas that lead to serious trouble unrelated to color schemes.
Public schools have them, too
Public schools have dress codes; some, typically elementary and middle schools, even require uniforms. "The schools usually do the uniforms as a voluntary program first and then go mandatory," says Rob Stone, Pinellas County Schools' public information officer.
Josh Tanner, 9, an incoming fifth-grader at Lawton Chiles Elementary in Tampa, says that though he must wear a uniform, he has some choice, picking from "a red shirt or black shirt or white shirt, all collared, and the pants: black, jeans or khaki" each day. Josh will be able to mix and match, which "makes me feel very good because then I can wear the school uniform and still do something different," he says.
Josh knows that an unusual hairstyle ("I comb my hair into a wave sometimes," he says) is another way to set yourself apart.
So, you have to wear a uniform
Once you've accepted the cotton polos and navy jumpers with their tasteful hemlines, the question remains: where to shop?
"(Schools) work with the parents and the local merchants as to where the best place is to get those uniforms. So, there's no one place," Stone says. Major department stores, places like JCPenney, Sears and Dillard's, sell uniforms, as do Target and some mail-order retailers, such as Lands' End.
Calling all fashion experts
Accessories dot the covers of magazines which, in their back-to-school fashion spreads, pitch the latest fad. Is it nifty knit caps? Or, what about a funky bag?
Jorge Ramon, Teen People's fashion director, spent his childhood ("from the first grade to the ninth grade") battling uniformity at an all-boys school.
"One of the things that I used to do, and is really popular right now, again, is doing little buttons that they used to wear in the '80s," he says from his New York office. "I would just put them all up and down my lapels. . . . You can even put pins on random places. It can be like on the pocket or on the back of your shoulder, kind of weird, funky places that you wouldn't actually think a pin would go."
Ramon touts stripes as hot stuff, recommending, "I would layer a T-shirt on top of my shirt and tie so I was following the rules, but I was just gilding their lily a little bit by adding a fun, funky T-shirt.
"Accessories are going to be what makes your outfit separate itself from the crowd," Ramone says. "Leg warmers are really fun and super cheap and really easy to wear. They're very '80s; they're very J.Lo, the whole Flashdance thing that's happening right now. Leg warmers would be the cutest little thing with the little school-girl skirt."
Warning to Florida schoolkids: Save the leg warmers for winter.
And for the boys?
"Those punk-studded belts are really cool," Ramon says.
For the fashionably frustrated, finding the right, dress-code appropriate accessory might be tough. Kids like Eden Suchar know it's not always the clothes that matter.
"The way I accessorized my uniform, I stood out from the others just by being myself," she says. "It's my attitude that made me a lot different than the others."