A New Badge of Cool?

Girl Scouts Gabby Canon and Kelly Chicca of Troop 1357 in Chatsworth wouldn’t march in the local holiday parade last December because they didn’t want to be seen in their uniforms--royal blue, pleated shorts and white blouses with yellow and blue stripes.

“It’s not the Girl Scouting that bothers us,” said 14-year-old Kelly, whose Cadette Scout status takes her out of the familiar green garb of younger Scouts. “It’s the uniforms. They just weren’t cool anymore.” Both Kelly and Gabby, 13, say they are embarrassed to wear the “nerdy” outfits.

Troop leader and Scout mother Nancy Chicca-Bloch said the girls always alter their uniforms when they wear them by folding up the shorts and shirt-sleeves. But they won’t have to any longer. There’s a new look for the Girl Scouts in the older age groups--the first major one since the late 1980s.

Over the next three to six months, Girl Scouts across the country can opt for polo or T-shirts, khaki cargo pants and safari-style hats. The new look is more casual, less obvious and very private-school-ish--a marked departure from the military-look that has dominated the uniforms since the organization’s founding in 1912.

“Universally, girls disliked the old uniform. They didn’t like the royal blue color, the skirts were too stiff, long and boxy. They wouldn’t wear the pants,” said Kathleen Duncan, national director for the Girl Scout equipment service in New York City. “The new [uniform] is less obvious, but it mirrors the trends in today’s clothing.”

Although the organization, with about 3.6 million scouts, is at its highest membership level in 25 years, the uniform update is part of a drive to attract new members and retain girls as they get older, Duncan said.

But with the surge in popularity of teen icons such as Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, Duncan said, girls of all ages everywhere are more concerned about their image. After hearing the protests of girls in Scout focus groups and in troops nationwide, the organization responded.

Some troop leaders are concerned that the Girl Scouts will lose their instant recognition with the new uniforms, and hence, advertisement for the organization might suffer. “We have a lot of closet Girl Scouts,” girls who keep their scout participation a secret when they are at school and in the community because they don’t want to stand out from their classmates or seem square, said Anne Van Gieson, a troop leader for Cadette and Senior Scouts in Lake View Terrace. She worries that the new uniforms are only going to perpetuate Girl Scout anonymity.

Van Gieson, a self-proclaimed traditionalist, says she prefers the old uniforms because they bring forth a formal attitude in the girls that a casual modern uniform just can’t duplicate. Troop leader Chicca-Bloch welcomes the change because she will no longer have to force her troop to wear the old uniforms or have to resort to tactics such as bribing Gabby and Kelly with ice cream to get them to wear their uniforms, as she did when they appeared for a recent interview with The Times at the San Fernando Valley scout office.

“Girls in junior high need to be the same as everyone else--acceptance is the biggest thing,” Chicca-Bloch said. “The [Girl Scout] promise is so goody-two-shoes, and they want to rebel at that age.”

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Over the years, uniforms have gone from dark-blue-skirt beginnings to dresses in the trademark green. Even when American couturier Mainbocher (Chicago-born Main Rousseau Bocher) designed the uniforms in the late 1940s, he did a simple green, short-sleeved dress with buttons down the front. In 1951, the older Scouts, wanting a different look, adopted green skirts and cardigans, and in the late 1980s switched to the royal blue outfits.

Duncan, along with help from her design team, adapted the latest uniform from trends at mainstream fashion stores such as Gap and Old Navy.

Junior Girl Scouts, ages 9 to 11, will keep the trademark Girl Scout grass-green but will be able to replace their white, button-down-collar blouses with a white, short-sleeve polo shirt or a T-shirt with “Girl Scout” across the front. Instead of green shorts, they can choose khaki shorts with cargo pockets or a tie-around skort--shorts with a skirt front--and a chain-link belt with the “Girl Scout” nameplate.

Cadette Scouts like Gabby and Kelly, as well as older, 15- to 18-year-old Senior Scouts, will be free of the dreaded royal blue. The new colors are navy blue and beige for polo shirts, vests, khaki cargo pants, A-line skirts and safari-style hats. And the sash has been modernized to tie at one end.

(Boys Scouts added a designer touch eight years ago when Oscar de la Renta brightened the color of their green shirts and added epaulets, according to Hugh Travis, a Boy Scouts Western Los Angeles County executive, who added that there are no plans for further changes.)

Shannon Adams, San Fernando Valley Girl Scouts spokeswoman, said the new uniforms will run from $60 to $70, although the old outfits will still be acceptable and, as always, the only uniform element that is required is the official Girl Scout pin.

Gabby and Kelly gave a nod to the new uniforms, which they saw for the first time in pictures, as they headed out for their ice cream. Kelly said: “We might even wear them outside of Girl Scouts.”