Figure 1.--.
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Figure 1.--. |
This catholic secondary school in Derbyshire had a kilt uniform for both the boys and girls. A student in 1994 explains the uniform regulations. The kilt was apparently not very popular with the boys. A former student has provided the following details.
My mother is originally from California and found school unform on me "amazingly cute" - but frankly, I'd rather have gone to hollywood high! I can confirm the story on your website about the Irish boys wearing wearing kilts as late as 1992-93, or at least I can confirm that it happened in England.
I attended St. Pius X school in Derbyshire, England, from then until 1994 (checking now, I beleive it closed in 98, a victim of the same government funding trap your correspondent describes). It was, in age range, a secondary school, which in the UK is ten or eleven to fifteen or sixteen. For the first year I was there I think there was a 6th form,
but that had been disbanded before the time I left. They didn't wear uniform, just had a fairly relaxed dress code. This may be of interest to HBC since I saw some quite interesting, previously unheard of, and frankly fairly amusing things happen.
Our blazer was black, yellow trim for the first 3 years. House badge (Dominicans, Benedictines and a couple of other orders of monks which slip my mind!) also in yellow. They started making girls wear blazers just before I went there.
Our ties had various width diagonal stripes, burgundy yellow and black. Foul, essentially.
Pullovers were an option. If worn, they were the same rather sick burgundy colour as the kilts.
Our kilts were burgandy. As far as I can tell the situation was pretty much as the Irish contributor describes. The boys wore almost exactly what us girls did in deference to the ancient history behind the place, except that ours fastened right to left and theirs left to right, with a pin. They knew as well as we did that they were being cheapied-out and were basically wearing skirts, and boy did they complain.
It WAS difficult to tell one from the other from behind, with the tendency of a kilt to stick out a bit and give the wearer an apparent fullness around the hips whether he or she had one or not. They picked up the mannerisms as well. All true, as far as I can
tell. I remember some years later at another school having a class photo taken and the photographer saying "Knees together, girls at the front" (we complied!) and thinking "yeah, and guys too if someone would've had their way!".
The boys had black socks which were clearly intended to be pulled up to knee level, but often weren't! There was some sort of decoration at the top but I can't remember what form it took. The girls wore black or white tights.
Personally, I thought it was ludicrous, and so did most other people. I even heard staff bitching about it; they didn't like looking stupid supporting it. Clearly this was a situation only waiting for a sharp winter to upset! St. Pius was a good mile back from
the road and then one more to anywhere interesting, and because I was a day pupil I had a longer walk than most. The winter of 1995 was pretty mild, then in late Spring--just before the Easter holidays, the English weather dumped 3 feet of snow on us in as many
days. Us girls had all been in tights since mid-September and I'm sure between having a good laugh at their expense we probably spared a thought for the guys.
One week after it snowed, with a week to go before the holidays, overnight, about 75 percent of boys started wearing the same black or white tights we wore. It's the
best-executed example of majority rule I ever came across in a school. It was hilarious, but somehow they managed to steel their way through the full week of it going "aah, toasty warm now". Naturally the staff (led by a curiously Catholic she-devil named Donnelly) weeded out the ringleaders and there was hell to pay.
When we came back from the holidays, the snow had been melted by weather warm enough to encourage even hardcore comfort-lovers like me out of our tights and there wasn't a problem for the rest of the term. However, before we came back after the holidays that summer, they'd given the kilts the boot--for the boys! I froze in a kilt there until my family moved out of the area in mid-1994, whereupon I ended up in a Catholic day school with scarecly more enlightened ideas.
J
Related Chronolgy Pages in the Boys' Historical Web Site
[The 1930s]
[The 1940s]
[The 1950s]
[The 1960s]
[The 1970s]
[The 1980s]
[The 1990s]
Related Style Pages in the Boys' Historical Web Site
[Long pants suits]
[Short pants suits]
[Socks]
[Eton suits]
[Jacket and trousers]
[Blazer]
[School sandals]