You won`t find many mall moppets dressing this way. And it`s not some look created by a design team.
This is fashion with an edge, with an attitude. It`s a style teens have created for themselves alone-a look pulled together by shopping alternative stores.
They prowl all sorts of shops searching for clothing that will add a personal stamp to their look. They find painter`s hats and leather work gloves at hardware stores. Slickers and boots at boating shops. Derbies, jackets, riding coats and bolo ties at saddle shops. And, at stores that sell the durable uniforms of America`s laborers, they find checked chef`s pants, overalls, heavy work boots and chef`s jackets.
”I`m tired of seeing people in the same things, just going through trends,” says Jed Hathaway, 16, of Mt. Prospect. ”I like to take things one step further. And I really like hats-maybe a beret decorated with all sorts of pins.”
He finds the beret and pins at army-navy surplus stores, and he regularly checks out Western-wear stores for boots or jewelry. His method pretty much echoes the shopping tactics of savvy teens who`ve created a totally personalized look by searching beyond mainstream stores for clothing.
”We get a lot of kids in here buying the painter`s pants, the welder`s caps and the black work boots,” says Frank Von Drasek, manager of Working Class, a uniform store in Oak Lawn. He`s seen the boots decorated-sometimes the rim of the heel is embellished with metal studs and the laces adorned with assorted medals-and the black quilted Chanel-like welder`s cap garnished with decorative pins.
”There was a time when kids were looking for scrubs,” he says, of the cotton hospital uniform, ”but that`s tapered off.”
Indeed, Charles Hirsh of S. Hirsh & Sons, a dealer of army-navy surplus, costume and period clothing, has seen clothing popularity change during the past couple of decades.
”Twenty years ago, they were into military looks,” says Hirsh of the kids who dig through the racks and boxes that fill an entire floor in the West Loop building that holds his store. ”Now they`re into looks from the `40s and `50s-oldtime pleated pants, reindeer sweaters.”
Hirsh is poised for the resurgence of pastel, ruffle-front shirts and polyester tuxedos in a brocade-textured fabric, circa late `60s. He recently bought up stock from a tuxedo store that was going out of business.
So popular are alternative shops that a stream of students from one high school descended on Libertyville Saddle Shop for knee-high glossy leather boots and felt derbies. More than a few also picked up metal tips for shirt collars and boots, jodhpurs and English-style riding coats.
Working overtime
Scouring specialty shops for clothing is not such a bad idea, for several reasons.
Prices on such items vary, depending on fabric content and quality, and often can be less expensive than similar items sold in mainstream stores.
Form usually follows function, so that ”fashion trends” take a back seat to durability. The clothing is designed and constructed to endure abuse. This is the real thing, not an adaptation. Synthetic rubber English riding boots and sailing boots are designed to keep feet dry first, for example, then look good. Work boots, as anyone who`s owned a pair knows, are meant to last. Then there`s the individuality. Some companies that deal in uniforms-doorman coats, for example-have the plain item in stock, with braid and emblem decorations available to order. And many of these items are so simple they demand decoration.
Or, as Hathaway points out, ”How strange you can make it (your clothing) expresses your individuality.” –
