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- NATION, Page 27American NotesCHICAGOChilling the Fashion Rage
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- Air Jordans, designer jeans, starter jackets -- the fashion
- competition among even pre-teenage children on Chicago's grim
- West Side is not just fierce, it's murderous. Toughs steal
- high-priced apparel right off their schoolmates' backs, and
- sometimes the victim gets killed in the process. Now the
- advisory council at Tilton Elementary School has decided to put
- an end to the status strife. The school has adopted a new
- voluntary uniform: navy slacks, white shirts and ties for the
- boys; white blouses and blue skirts or jumpers for the girls.
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- Similar dress codes are in force at public inner-city
- schools in Baltimore, Detroit and New Haven, Conn. Encouraged
- by the program's success (at week's end 480 of the school's 800
- students were wearing the new outfits), members of the advisory
- council may make uniforms mandatory in September. "Some of the
- girls say I'm a nerd," said smiling fifth-grader LaDonna
- Wright, proudly wearing her jumper and blouse, "but I say, `I'm
- a radical dudette.'"
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