Students Say Teachers Deserve an F in Fashion

Back to school--a time for new jeans, skirts, basketball shoes, polos, pullovers and jerseys. But perhaps not for teachers, whose reputation for fashion can best be described as “frumpy.”

In classrooms where literal communication is taken, well, literally, students complain that teachers give short shrift to the visual medium of fashion.

And students should know: They take the matter academically.

When the last bell rings on a blistering afternoon at Hollywood High, the blacktop becomes a runway as girls march out the gate with struts worthy of Milan fashion shows. What is astonishing is how up they dress--tight black slacks, silky tops, strappy platforms, thickened eyelashes and meticulously lined lips.

Is this high school or haute couture?

In contrast, many teachers wear low-hanging jeans, half-tucked dress shirts, tattered tennies. The students have studied this divergence.

“They are supposed to be role models for us,” says Gayane Panosyan, 17, “but some of them look like they just rolled out of bed.”

Gayane kicks back in gray skirt, black jacket (remember, it’s better than 90 degrees out), black platforms and full makeup. Fittingly, she aspires to be a fashion designer. “The teachers’ fashion says they don’t care about their jobs--they’re just coming to work and can’t wait to leave,” she says.

Just then, one of the first teachers out the door strolls by . . . in shorts and T-shirt.

“Kids are like, it’s back to school and I need new clothes,” says Luis Robles, a 15-year-old in crisp white jeans and T-shirt with a Michael Jordan jersey on top. “But the way teachers dress is not like that.

“I don’t want to be harping, but some teachers dress low budget.”

Maybe with good reason.

Though he dresses quite hip in tight jeans and a denim top over a red T-shirt, long-haired substitute teacher Meeno Peluce, 27, defends his knowledge-dispensing kindred at Hollywood High: “This job is not one that pays you enough to dress very well.

“Fashion reflects the structure of a school,” he adds. “There’s a lot of chaos in this school district. But the schools that are not chaotic--it’s mirrored in the way teachers dress. . . .

“The way I dress is part of how I try to communicate on the students’ level,” Peluce says. “They don’t block me out because I’m more like them.”

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Teacher Jeff Buck, 42, agrees. He sports Guess jeans, a plaid short-sleeve shirt and Vans skateboard shoes.

“I think teachers should look in a way kids like,” he says as he examines a vine for his horticulture class. “As long as you look smart.”

A few paces away, Jose Mendoza, 16, and friend Karla Guevara, 14, take up the topic during Buck’s horticultural outing.

Karla: “The point is to be respected. If teachers dress shabby I wouldn’t respect them.”

Jose: “Yeah, you might say he’s a cholo. Some women teachers show a lot of leg. They have better bodies than the girls here. But I still respect them.”

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Just as the Los Angeles Unified School District does not have a dress code for students--though individual campuses can establish guidelines, a district administrator says--there is no formal dress code for instructors, for fear of running afoul of the teachers union (“They have a strong union,” says one administrator).

Private schools also appear reluctant to impose dress codes on teachers. There is none at Harvard-Westlake in Studio City or at Crossroads School for Arts and Sciences in Santa Monica. “We expect faculty to dress in a manner that’s appropriate to the profession, but we leave it to them to interpret that,” says Crossroads Dean of Students Tom Nolan.

“It’s important for teachers to be conscious of the way they dress,” says Nolan, who sports the crisp polos and dress shirts of Structure, his favorite store. “Kids are highly fashion-conscious and dress is a way of showing respect to students and establishing expectation.”