Some kids stand out to fit in

It’s almost September, and Alison Altman, a 12-year-old from Chatsworth with black square glasses and stringy strawberry blond hair, admits that she hasn’t decided what she’s going to wear on the most important fashion day of the year -- the first day of school. But she’s definitely thinking about it.

“I used to be a prep girl and kind of snooty, and I don’t want to be that anymore,” she says. So this year, her first year of middle school at the Highland Hall Waldorf School in Northridge, she’s going to “go a little crazy” with her style.

“I really like to draw, and lately I’ve been drawing myself with ears and a tail,” Altman says. “And this summer I sewed these cat ears onto a white headband, and then I have this stuffed animal tail that my mom and I are going to pin to a skirt, so that’s what I’m working with right now.

“I want the shock value,” she adds. “Even if people do talk behind my back, so what? It’s me.”

A few days later, after rummaging through her closet, Altman has her outfit picked out (and a sketch in her notebook of herself wearing it). This week she will show up at school in the white and pink cat-ear headband, a baggy olive green Ecko long-sleeved shirt, a short blue-and-black plaid miniskirt (with spandex shorts underneath), black knee socks yanked all the way up, black Airwalks and, of course, the tail. It is a fantastic mix of styles -- punk, skater, urban and kooky -- and she looks great wearing it, almost like a living cartoon.

“I want to give off my new impression,” Altman says. “I want to show the new me.”

There has always been something defining about the back-to-school outfit, a belief that these are the clothes that will set the tone for the entire year. Some kids piece together their ensembles slowly, throughout the summer, scouring malls and magazines for ideas, while others wait for that last giddy night before homework to decide what to wear.

The first-day outfit may be especially important to “tweens,” kids ages 11 to 14 who are in various stages of stepping into adolescence and leaving childhood behind. It’s a time of experimenting with issues of identity and fitting in, and trying to balance the need to be an individual and the need to keep your schoolmates from making fun of you.

This year the fashion world is forecasting the return of the preppy look -- think polo shirts and lots of pink -- but this is California, and the kids are only half paying attention to the fashion cues. Nobody wants to be too trendy. Still, layered tank tops and Chuck Taylors will be ubiquitous on that first day.

“I never really got the whole preppy thing,” says Nora Gilbert-Hamerling, a petite 14-year-old with long dark hair who is starting her freshman year at Santa Monica High School. “I’m pretty trendy for the most part, but I still have my own guidelines for my style. It’s trendy, kind of funky, but mostly trendy. And I don’t wear green and yellow because my skin is olive and it makes me look green.”

The staples of Gilbert-Hamerling’s back-to-school wardrobe are lots of skirts, tons of jeans, some funny “funky” shirts from Urban Outfitters and a stockpile of Abercrombie tank tops that are good for layering. She also has a lot of Juicy Couture jackets, most of which she got on sale at Loehmann’s or as presents. For footwear, it will mostly be Reef flip-flops and four pairs of Converse sneakers. “I have purple, white, black and another pair of black because they go with everything,” she says.

Gilbert-Hamerling and her mom no longer make the annual back-to-school shopping trip to the mall to buy an entire year’s wardrobe in a single binge. “I usually just pick stuff up throughout the summer,” she says. “We used to do the huge shopping spree, but everything always seems picked over. This way I just find a few things I like and I don’t feel overwhelmed by stuff at the end.”

She hasn’t obsessed over her back-to-school outfit, but she does know what it will be. She recently went to a new place on Montana Avenue called LF Stores, and it was having a big sale, so she bought four new shirts there. “I got this one shirt that’s blue with an orange silk flower on it, so I’ll probably wear that with my AG jeans or my Frankie B. jeans and an orange tank top underneath the shirt. And then I’ll wear my Reefs because they’re comfortable.”

Twelve-year-old Wyatt Bentley, a skinny redhead from Studio City whose growth spurt is still waiting to happen, says this year he’s going for a vintage look. In fact, he just came back from a shopping trip with his mom to Buffalo Exchange on Ventura Boulevard, where he bought five T-shirts, including one with a picture of Che Guevara on it and one from a 2001 marathon with a drawing of aliens. He and his mom also hit a large store in Sherman Oaks called Iguana Vintage Clothing, which is probably Bentley’s favorite store, but he didn’t get anything there because the good T-shirts were all $50. Earlier this summer he got some old Clash T-shirts.

But it’s not like vintage is the big thing at Highland Hall, where Bentley will be a sixth-grader. “A couple of my friends who don’t go to my school wear vintage,” he says, “but the older kids in my school, they think they’re, like, punks, but they aren’t. Just because they have a couple of pins on their shirts and some plaid pants you get at Hot Topic.”

He’s still not exactly sure what he’s going to wear on the first day of school. “I don’t, like, plan it,” he says, “but I think it’s cool to know. I’ve picked some stuff out, but it’s not like I’m thinking about it two months ahead.”

Bentley has these camouflage pants that he’ll probably wear with one of his Clash T-shirts. He’s not the best at tying shoelaces, so he’s going to wear some slip-on black Vans that have “these weird designs” on them. And he also has a pair of oversized amber-tinted sunglasses. “I like making an impression,” he says.

In a perfect world, Marina Sterngold, a 13-year-old who’s starting eighth grade at Paul Revere Middle School, on the border of Pacific Palisades and Brentwood, will wear American Eagle jeans on her first day. The problem is, the last time she went to an American Eagle Outfitters she was too little to fit into even the smallest size. But that was a few months ago, so with a little luck, Sterngold will have grown enough to fit into a size 0.

Sterngold did most of her back-to-school shopping at Forever 21, American Eagle and a little at Nordstrom and Macy’s. She used to shop at Limited Too, but that was years ago. “I think it’s kind of tacky now,” she says. “Their clothing is the same as Target.”

On her first day of school, Sterngold says, she will wear her jeans and the layered shirt thing and her American Eagle jacket, and sneakers. She’d like to try Converse Chuck Taylors, but she doesn’t want to seem too trendy. “Everybody would say you’re buying them just to fit in,” she says. “They get the wrong idea and then you feel like a loser. Also, my friend is like, ‘They are so uncomfortable, but I just wear them anyway.’ I don’t want a pair of shoes that are totally out of style, but if they aren’t comfortable, I don’t really want them.”

Mary Chieffo, 11, is in the middle of a full-fledged growth spurt -- she’s now 5-feet-7 1/2 after growing at least 4 inches in the past year. That means not only lots of new clothes, but also that she can share clothes with her mom. Chieffo mostly likes “comfy” clothes -- loose fitting jeans that are already broken in, simple T-shirts and her soccer shorts -- and says she doesn’t care about what’s in style that much.

Chieffo and her mom shop mostly at Marshalls and Robinsons-May, and they also get a lot of clothes at Costco because the deals are so good. Sometimes she and her mom will visit one of the boutiques in Long Beach and pick up a Paul Frank T-shirt or -- their new favorite -- brightly colored Michael Stars deconstructed T-shirts.

A few days before starting at Millikan Middle School, a performing arts magnet school in Sherman Oaks, Chieffo gave her back-to-school outfit a test run at a small dinner party at her parents’ house. She put on her mother’s jeans and a hot-pink Michael Stars shirt, and tied a multicolored scarf around her head. She and her mom both liked the way it looked, and decided it was a go. But she doesn’t think that what you wear on the first day of school is totally crucial.

“To a degree it is important, but not really important,” she says. “It’s not like if you don’t wear something good you won’t make any friends.”

Alex Eisenberg is a 13-year-old guitar player who is entering eighth grade at Millikan Middle School. He says he hasn’t really thought about what he’s going to wear.

“School is important, but it’s not the most important thing to me,” he says. He’s more interested in his band.

According to his mom, Eisenberg was a trendsetter last year, wearing tight jeans and form-fitting shirts. He says he guesses that’s true, and says he also used to dress weird just to annoy the kids at his school who were into hip-hop. But this year he’s not trying to make any fashion statements. “I’m going to end up wearing what I wear every day,” he says, sounding tired of the conversation. “Jeans and a T-shirt and an over shirt.” He also wears a pair of his mom’s old Converse sneakers that he’s had for a while. He customized them himself when he was bored in class.

“I drew a word on them,” he says. “It says ‘boob.’ ”