2 Corners of Chicago Reflect New Image of Failure, Success

There are 4 million people here. This dispatch rests on the view of 0.00005%, or two of them.

Pollsters would thus ascribe a significant margin of error to the sample. But these two, both women, are well spoken and well positioned. They come from extremes of this gilded, impoverished colossus of the Midwest, close to the vital threads of things. So why not take their word for it?

Besides, who ever knew a pollster with a heart for adventure or the capacity for self-doubt?

What these two women say is that images do count in 1992 America.

That’s because images, whether we always like it or not, and no matter how heavily applied, convey, but cannot conceal. A fraudulent image, grand as it may be, reveals a fraud, does it not?

So, when the images of America change we can figure that the great heaving political material underfoot is in motion, as well.

The images in mind are those of failure and success.

West of the downtown Loop, in the public housing projects, in one of the seemingly endless poor, ethnic neighborhoods of Chicago, Irene Johnson has seen whole city blocks full of people smeared for a generation or two with the worst kind of image--of violence, of destitution, of drugs and hopelessness. Images of people who are told, who come to believe, they are failures just because of where they live, because of their station, by virtue of their unwanted birthright--because of their emergence on an enameled delivery table at this longitude and latitude at this time in the muddled affairs of things.

Well, for those who venture a look, that image is changing. The hopeless, entrenched image of public housing in Chicago flickers with, what else, hope.

Then again, downtown along Michigan Avenue’s Magnificent Mile, in an office in the men’s department behind the racks of well-draped wool suits and delicate silk ties, Marianne C. Wolf is an image consultant, personal shopper, arbiter of taste for Bloomingdale’s Chicago--the dress-for-success counselor to those working their way to the top or those born there.

If you haven’t noticed, Wolf says, the sharp, arrogant contours of the urban uniform for success are going softer, simpler, subtler and more approachable. What we once would call the Yuppie, looking for a ventless coat, is now called Daddy and is shopping in the baby department.

They’re spiffing up the ghetto and dressing down in the penthouse. And if that isn’t an important political trend, what is?

In the 35-year-old public housing project known as LeClaire Courts, there are 616 units, 4,000 people, almost all of them black. The project is one of those in America where the poor are assuming management of their own housing and their own destiny, in this case through a board of directors of 10 African-American women.

A decade ago, news clippings describe the place as “infested.” The usual: drugs, gangs, idleness, crime, graffiti, government housing bureaucrats.

“You’re talking about people here who had nothing to lose. They were rock-bottom. How much further down could they go? The only way we could retain some low-income housing units in this city was to do it ourselves,” says Johnson, who is president and CEO of the tenant corporation. She reared her three sons here; two graduated from college and one is a college student.

Her language is rich with lyrics of hope and faith: She speaks of economic opportunity, of the self-satisfaction and pride of home ownership, of the equality of people in the eyes of the God she trusts, and of the rising spirit of those who have gained means to resume the struggle.

“Once you understand that, you see people begin to feel good about themselves. . . . Once we said we wanted to do it, we began gaining support from other elements of society. . . . The private sector, in particular, came out to help us. They told us how to do A and how to do B. . . . Amoco helped a lot. They said, risk? We take risks all the time. We’re going to take a risk on you.”

Drifting through the open window comes music to Johnson’s lyrics: The screech of a circular saw, the clatter of rakes, the pounding of hammers, the whir of a mower, the bitter tangy smell of roofing asphalt.

A damaged community is slowly rebuilding. According to the tenant plan, in another 10 years nearly half of the units will be in cooperative home ownership with the tenants.

“Sure, we’re dreamers. But our dreams come true. . . . And politicians? They ought to come down here more. They ought to be pals with the people they serve.”

Meanwhile, Wolf says, the change that she sees as director of Bloomingdale’s At His Service has been “amazing” over the last four years.

“People almost never ask me about looking successful anymore,” she says. “They tell me they want to be careful not to look better than the people they’re doing business with. . . . I have less people ask me for something with sizzle. . . . They don’t want to be aggressive. . . . More traditional, simpler, less trendiness.

“The baby business is phenomenal. That’s where I see a lot of people putting their money. Where three years ago they would go for a new blazer, they’re thinking about something for the newborn. . . . And gifts, where someone before would just order 30 of this or 50 of that, they’re now watching more carefully what they spend and spending for things that are more individual, more meaningful. They don’t want to appear, well, ostentatious. . . .

“My customers still think of themselves as pretty hip. . . . But maybe they’re growing up.”