New Clothing Designer Lets Teens Get Around Dress Codes

The underlying message usually isn't polite or correct, but Dress Code Violator lets teenagers express themselves despite mandatory dress codes. The company is selling anagrammed t-shirts with phrases such as "Grim Tidy Liar" (rearranged from "I'm A Dirty Girl:") and "Messy Bait" ("Bite My Ass"). The covert meaning of the nonsense phrases is revealed when the student flips up the bottom of her shirt.

The founder of the clothing line, Ronnie Bramsche, was frustrated with what he saw as too much political correctness and infringement on the student's right to express themselves. When working as a promoter for another business he suggested giving away girl's spaghetti-strap tank tops. After being told they would not meet the dress code of most schools, the promoter began looking for ways to subvert the overbearing system. He is encouraging exploitation of a loophole found in many school's dress codes. Bramsche believes many other people feel the urge to be "Dress Code Violators".

The loophole that is being exploited is usually a policy forbidding message t-shirts of a sexual or teasing nature, or shirts that promote drugs and alcohol. Schools claim such items are disruptive in an academic setting. They cannot, however, ban message shirts altogether as that would infringe upon students' First Amendment rights.

Multiple cases have been filed across the country over a school districts suspending a student for a shirt they deemed inappropriate. Recently, a student won his case after the school district suspended him for wearing a shirt whose graphics included cocaine and a spilled martini glass - and messages calling President Bush a liar, drug user and "chicken-hawk-in-chief" pursuing a "world domination tour." Such a case is an example of a school district abusing a provision against one kind of message - drugs and alcohol promotion - when the statement was clearly about something else altogether.