Beach store offers customers a uniform experience

VIRGINIA BEACH

Culottes, jumpers, Peter Pan blouses.

With local Catholic schools opening today, the required student uniforms have been flying off the shelves at Rose Uniform, where the clothing world is limited to a handful of plaids and solids.

For many parents, resigned children in tow, shopping at Rose is an annual tradition, even an obligation - some schools stipulate that only Rose-supplied uniforms are acceptable.

The store at 1920 Centerville Tnpk. is mobbed each August, and the back-to-school ritual was familiar on both sides of the counter as customers queued up one afternoon last week.

"School?" asked clerk Brianna Manwaring.

"St. Gregory," replied Nancy Rechkemer, accompanied by her son Hunter, 13, and daughter Sophie, 6.

Scanning St. Gregory's Web-posted uniform specifications for colors and styles, the Norfolk mom ticked off what she needed.

"I need shorts, size 6, for a boy, and pants, too," she said. "A short-sleeved blouse, size 7 or 8 for a girl, Peter Pan," the name of a rounded-collar style. "And I'll probably be back later."

Protestant academies also are on the list of more than 70 schools that Rose serves. Amanda Tripp shopped for her daughters, ages 6 and 8, who attend Tabernacle Baptist Academy in Virginia Beach.

"We're getting jumpers, skirts and polo shirts," Tripp said, "a little bit of everything." Culottes, a style of skirt split into legs, were still in the girls' wardrobes from last year, she said.

Julie Degenhardt, the store's manager, starts stocking up in January. School uniforms account for close to 100 percent of the shop's trade, though Degenhardt is branching out into medical uniforms and chef's wear.

At Rose, the children are fresh-faced, but the neckties, hair bands, knee socks and kilt skirts seem ageless, preserving a look a generation or more old.

LeAnne Eubanks, a fifth-grader at Portsmouth Catholic Regional School, watched as her mother, Karen, selected navy-blue and maroon skirts, shorts and polo.

"I went to Portsmouth Catholic, too, and I wore the very same thing twenty-some years ago. It's not changed," Karen Eubanks said.

LeAnne, who was in cutoffs, a T-shirt and flip-flops, was ambivalent about uniforms. "I don't care," she said before admitting she wouldn't wear a uniform if she had a choice.

Eubanks, like many parents, gave uniforms a thumbs-up.

"She gets up in the morning and we don't have to decide what she's going to wear. She already knows," she said.

It's a routine that Tania Velazquez and her 5-year-old daughter, Nemesis, were just entering. Knee socks, hair scrunchie, jumper, tights, all in shades of Hunter Green, piled on the counter to clothe the kindergartner in her first year at Holy Trinity Catholic School in Norfolk.

The wide-eyed little girl pulled on a logoed button-down cardigan sweater, sized "youth, extra small."

"I can't see my thumb. I can only see my four fingers," she told her mom. Velazquez rolled the sleeves up and bought it.

She was ready to cry, she said, but not because the sweater was loose. Rather, a visit to Rose was a reminder that her baby was growing up and headed for school. "She's my only one and it's the first time," Velazquez said. "Mommy's not ready to let go."

Steven G. Vegh, (757) 446-2417, steven.vegh@pilotonline.com