School uniforms once consisted of scratchy wool skirts and sweaters or drab polyester outfits, usually well-worn or recycled through large families. With plenty of plaid, pleats and Peter Pan collars, uniforms were unpretentious symbols of a parochial school education.
What of the girls who wore them? Were the uniforms a cross to bear or an easy escape for those who lacked fashion flair? Did they squash a young woman’s sense of style or shape it?
Interviews with a number of Chicago-area women who grew up wearing school uniforms yielded an unexpected consensus: School uniforms rule.
Colleen Keleher, 48, remembers that at the start of each school year, her grandmother and great-grandmother — both seamstresses — came to her house with sewing kits in hand. Keleher and her four sisters would climb atop the dining room table, and the two women would adjust their hemlines.
“They had pins in their mouths and they were talking in Italian,” said Keleher, of Oak Park, who graduated from Immaculate Conception High School in Elmhurst in 1976.
Wearing uniforms “seemed more the norm than not,” said Keleher, the seventh of 10 children. She appreciated the lack of fashion choices. “It was easy to get up in the morning and put on the same thing.”
Today Keleher is an urgent care physician at Edward Immediate Care Center in Bolingbrook who prefers wearing scrubs instead of her everyday clothes. “Given the option, I’m back in uniform,” she said.
Difficult to burn
When Patti O’Donnell graduated from Mother McAuley High School on Chicago’s Southwest Side in 1980, she did what nearly every girl who had worn a uniform for 12 years yearned to do: Burn it. Or at least try to.
“We discovered that polyester didn’t burn,” she said. “It kind of melted.”
O’Donnell, 44, of Oak Lawn, said her own taste in clothing is conservative, not far off from her uniform days. “I don’t have a lot of clothes,” she said. “Having too many choices makes me kind of crazy.”
Despite her rebellious act, O’Donnell was and is a proponent of school uniforms.
“I never remember hating my uniform,” she said.
Easy to fit in
Because the school drew girls from various socioeconomic backgrounds, it was easier for girls from less affluent areas to fit in.
A mother of four, O’Donnell is pleased that her teenage daughters attend Mother McAuley, where the emphasis is on personal growth as opposed to fashion, she said.
Numerous studies conducted by educational and women’s studies experts support such assertions, said Ann Hetzel Gunkel, professor of humanities and cultural studies at Columbia College Chicago. Uniforms are effective in enhancing school performance and behavior, she said.
Uniforms challenge young people to distinguish themselves in ways other than clothing or appearance, said Gunkel, 43. “Their differentiation is not based on image but on social activities, intellectual interests and achievements,” she said.
Uniforms are an important “equalizer” for young women who are “frequently under enormous pressure to be obsessed with image,” she said.
A graduate of Resurrection High School on Chicago’s Northwest Side, Gunkel said wearing uniforms “gave me a feminist sensibility.” The uniforms are partly responsible for her continuing to question “those kind of superficial requirements placed on women,” she said.
Jeanne Delaney Lippert, a marketing consultant who lives in Beverly on Chicago’s Southwest Side, wore a wool skirt and white polo shirt embroidered with the school logo when she attended Mother McAuley, where she graduated in 1994.
While some of her classmates were quick to shed their uniforms after school, Lippert would wear her uniform up until bedtime.
“Call me lazy, but you could find me at the grocery store with my mom or at the mall in my uniform,” she said.
Lippert, 30, unabashedly supports the concept of uniforms for workday fashions.
“I really love uniforms,” she said. “If they were socially acceptable in the workplace, I would be on that bandwagon. I find myself wearing the same outfits to work on certain days of the week.”
Chicago Public Schools teacher Jaime Vasquez, 27, graduated from The Willows Academy in Des Plaines in 1997. The school, which serves girls in 6th through 12th grades, required a uniform of a knee-length black plaid skirt, polo shirt and black dress shoes.
Vasquez, who grew up in Park Ridge and is the eldest of 12 children, said her mother “hated out-of-uniform day more than anything” as the family had to scramble to assemble outfits. Six of her siblings are school-aged and attending parochial schools in Mundelein, where her family now lives.
Less of a hassle
The uniforms were “built to last” and “cut down a lot on the hassle” of dressing every day, she said.
“I have positive memories,” she said. “The uniforms were kind of ugly, but it’s the flavor that reminds me of my school days.”
Vasquez appreciated the “leveling effect” of the uniform.
“I didn’t always feel superconfident about my body,” she said. “Wearing uniforms was an equalizer. It didn’t matter whether someone was totally glamorous, fat or skinny, or if they had acne or beautiful skin.”
In turn, Vasquez strives to send a studious message by the way she dresses for work.
“I want to dress professionally and with dignity,” she said. “As a teacher I’m setting a standard and I’m taking my job seriously.”
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Designer draws inspiration from her uniforms
Do school uniforms have a place in high fashion? Absolutely — if you’re Eileen Fisher.
The New York clothing designer’s former Catholic school uniforms inspired her own designs, she said in an e-mail interview.
“My school uniforms didn’t necessarily express who I was, but they were the seeds that helped me envision the birth of the company,” said Fisher, a 1968 graduate of St. Patrick Academy in Des Plaines, which has since closed.
Fisher wore a maroon wool jumper in elementary school and pleated skirts, tweed jackets and white blouses with Peter Pan collars for high school.
Fisher appreciated the convenience of the uniform in her daily dressing for school.
“It made my life less complicated,” she said. “For 12 years, I didn’t have to think about what I was going to wear in the morning.”
The only time Fisher resisted the uniform policy was in elementary school when one of the nuns forbade the girls from wearing nylons. Only maroon or white knee socks were allowed.
“In protest, we wore one white and one maroon sock,” Fisher said.
Fisher founded her company in 1984 in New York City after working in interior design and graphic arts.
“As a young woman in New York, I always had to change clothes for different occasions,” she said. “I couldn’t go from work to an after-work party without changing. It was frustrating. Men have the suit as a `uniform.’ I wanted that too.”
Fisher began sketching ideas for “fluid, loose and comfortable clothing,” and decided to launch her own design business. She recalled with favor the practical part of her school uniforms and how they were “seasonless.” She then incorporated that feature into her design concepts.
Eileen Fisher Inc., operates 37 retail stores across the United States, including Chicago and Arlington Heights locations. Sales for her company were $195 million in 2005, a spokeswoman said.
That’s quite a feat for a feisty girl who once wore a maroon jumper and a mismatched pair of knee socks.
–D.R.M.
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