M

oney. Why did it always come back to that? I didn’t want it to, we weren’t like that, and baruch Hashem, we could make ends meet. It was just… the expenses were insane. Leah’s seminary year — well, we could have taken out a mortgage just for that. And Chaviva was the world’s most fashion-conscious 15-year-old, always obsessing over what her friends and classmates were wearing, or buying, or doing.

At least the school uniform didn’t leave much space for agonizing. Pleated skirts, checkered shirts, and the sweater with the school logo. Speaking of which, we had to go to the store before sizes ran out.

“The uniform store? You mean the Perlson’s basement with like a thousand people climbing over each other and pleated skirts crumpled all over the store and everyone fighting over the same mirror?” Chaviva wrinkled her nose. “I hate going there, Ma.”

“I know,” I said, just about holding myself back from adding, I hate it too, okay? “But we have to get your stuff, so….”

“We could go to Plaid & Pleats,” Chaviva said quickly. It actually looked like she’d been waiting for an opening to suggest this.

“The what?”

Chaviva flipped through the local circular and pointed at a sleek, bold ad. “Here. Plaid & Pleats. It’s a new uniform store and it’s supposed to be amazing, no crazy lines, everything way more organized… all my friends are going there. You can’t compare.”

No lines? Organized? Sounded too good to be true. I took the paper and scanned the ad: Okay, it was at the other end of town, and by appointment only, but fine.

“Make us an appointment, I’ll take you,” I told Chaviva.

“Yay! Thank you, Ma!” She bounded off, already dialing. I watched, suddenly suspicious.

Was I missing something?

A

pparently, more than something.

Because when we (finally) got through and (finally) got an appointment and drove across town and searched for parking and huffed our way down the block to get to our appointment on time — I almost thought we had the wrong address.

Was this a spa or a store?

The soft lighting. Sconces and pouffes. Dreamy music piping through unseen speakers, a scent in the air. And no skirts, shirts, or school sweaters to be seen, at all.

“Hi, welcome to Plaid & Pleats! Chaviva, is it?” The woman seated behind a high, glass-topped desk looked like her outfit had come straight off a mannequin at one of the trendy boutiques nearby — not the look I’d expected for an at-home uniform store. But hey, the vibe was altogether… not what I’d expected.

“Yes, that’s me!” Chaviva said brightly.

“Sooo lovely to meet you. What school, what uniform, and what size do you usually take? I’ll go to the back and get what you need.”

I wanted to say something to Chaviva while she was gone, but my daughter was just staring around in wide-eyed wonder. I closed my mouth as a vaguely unsettled feeling came over me.

“Okay, here we are.” The saleslady was back. “Skirts — I brought you two different brands, slightly different styles. Each one has a longer and a shorter style, you can try them both. And you might need to size up in the second brand, they tend to run tight. Try them and let me know, take your time, okay? We want you to feel great in whatever you choose.”

She motioned a curtained-off area. “There’s the fitting room. And Mom, you can take a seat, relax. Can I offer you a coffee?”

Coffee? On a uniform run? Where exactly had we landed?

My unease escalated into a full-blown red alert. With sudden suspicion, I picked up one of the skirts that Chaviva had left behind for now, and checked for a price. There was nothing on the label.

“Excuse me. Sorry… how much does this cost?”

“The skirts? They’re 79.99 each.”

Whaat? At the other store, uniform skirts were $43. Even with inflation.

My sticker shock must have been plastered over my face, because the saleslady continued, a bit apologetically, “There is a markup, because we try to give the best possible customer service, and the store is expensive to maintain. But we still try to keep it as affordable as possible, and of course, the skirts are great quality, they last forever, you get much more use out of them than a regular everyday outfit.”

A markup. You don’t say. And the store being expensive to maintain? Well, yes, that would be the music and scents and the potted plants and decor, the fancy ads and the one-on-one appointments and the — were those branded tote bags to carry purchases home in?

“Hey, how does this look, Ma?” Chaviva pranced out, modeling her school uniform like it was a wedding gown.

I swallowed my distaste. “Great. Perfect.”

“I think so, too. The skirts are great. Let’s get a bunch of them, and the sweaters in a size XS….” Chaviva was chattering on, but all I could think was 79.99 a skirt.

Honestly, all I wanted to do was to take down the correct size, brand, and style, and ask Perlson to put a few aside for us. But we’d taken the saleslady’s time and had tried everything on. It felt wrong not to buy. And the other store would be a jungle so close to the school year, and what if they were out of Chaviva’s size?

I took a deep breath. “We’ll take one of each,” I told the saleslady.

“One?” Chaviva protested.

“Now we know your size. I can come back anytime to get more,” I told her firmly. Or not.

The one set of uniform came to almost $200. I felt sick.

L

eaving the store, Chaviva was dancing. She was all excited over the branded tote and also insisted on purchasing the mint-colored Stanley with the words Do School in Style embossed in gold lettering around the rim (“just an add-on if you like, allll the high school girls are getting them,” the woman had said brightly), and whatever cute little stationery supplies came in an adorable matching pencil case.

“And the tote is free, it’s so fun!” she enthused.

I pressed my lips together. Nothing was free. Those were part of the markup. And so were the branded shopping bags, the tissue paper and care cards, and the mini uniform care kit in a velvet drawstring pouch.

I didn’t say anything until we were home. But as soon as Chaviva was out of earshot, I dialed Chayala. “Tell me,” I said, no preamble. “When did it become okay to spend a thousand dollars on school uniforms for the year for one daughter?”

“Never — oh, wait, don’t tell me you went to that new boutique kinda place?” Chayala was quick on the uptake. “It’s crazy. Everyone’s going nuts over it. My cousin Minna — Perlson, you know her — she says they’re taking a huge cut. I mean, Minna does it at practically cost price — it’s a total gemach, her uniform store. But that’s what we need, not another crazy expense.”

“Exactly! Everything’s luxury and brand names these days. And uniforms were supposed to be something we could get at a normal price. And now?” I forced myself to take a breath, I was so angry. “Now someone’s opened this trendy new place and all the teens are peer-pressuring each other to go, and it’s costing us double the price for literally the same exact items.”

“I know. My daughters were telling me about it, it’s a whole thing. Like, did you get your appointment yet? I told them obviously we’re not doing it. Minna has all the same stuff, and I have four girls in school. I don’t have $4,000 squirrelled away for an artisanal uniform experience.”

“Take out a mortgage for uniforms, on top of the one for tuition.” I rubbed my hand on my eyes. “So how’s your cousin’s store? Is it busy enough there still? Or is everyone doing a Chaviva and going for the… well… artisanal experience?”

“Minna? She’s okay. Frustrated, but like I said, she’s doing it for chesed, really, not business. But she does want to sell out her stock, not to come out at a loss. And she said she’s definitely had a lot less customers this year.”

“Well, you can tell her she just got one of them back. I’ll be back at her place in a second. I don’t intend to ever spend that much money on a single uniform set again,” I said.

If I could tell the owner of Plaid & Pleats one thing, it would be: How can you raise communal standards in yet another area — when so many families are struggling just to cover the basics?

Zeesy

The second the local circular hit the mailbox, I was out there, thumbing through it frantically, flipping the pages, my heart doing some sort of tap dance. Oh my goodness, there. It. Was.

In full color. Eye catching design. Brand colors, name and logo in bold… it was real! Plaid & Pleats was a reality.

Okay, so I’d been setting up for months, close to a year. Converting the garage from a dump into an actual store, stocking uniforms and negotiating with suppliers, meeting with a marketing strategist and ordering branded bags and swag and all those millions of details that came with setting up a brand new baby — sorry, business — from scratch.

But this… this was real.

My phone was beeping, ringing, buzzing. So that part — yeah, that was my fault, because I wanted to make the store by appointment only. Someday I’d figure out how to automate the appointment booking process, but for now — until I got a feel for the interest level, how many customers, how long an appointment tended to take, or if I’d be working with an assistant or not — I’d decided to do the appointment scheduling myself.

Maybe that was a bit overambitious. But I could do it. I’ve been waiting to do it. I picked up the phone — nineteen inquiries, between the missed calls and my messages. And the ad was only just being delivered.

We were in business!

Y

ou could say the idea came to me a year ago. But it was really a whole lot longer in the making.

Last August, I’d taken my oldest daughter Ruti to the local one-stop uniform store — really someone’s overcrowded, badly lit basement, filled with too many people and shirts, skirts, sweaters of all sizes, many left half-off their hangers or heaped on the floor.

Ruti had cringed visibly when we entered. “Can we just, like, do this fast?” she muttered to me.

“Believe me, I want out of here as much as you do, kiddo.” I shook my head. Somehow, these basement uniform stores always left such a bad taste in my mouth. Maybe because I’d always been the girl struggling to find my size in the mess (clue: it wasn’t a size zero) and having to approach frazzled and overwhelmed salesladies for yet another size up. It was not fun.

Ruti had the same build as me, short and stocky, hard to fit. At least she had a mother who knew how to get the attention of the woman in charge.

“Excuse me? Hi. Can I please get three of these skirts in a size 18? And where are the striped shirts?”

Ruti cringed a little when I said the number, eyes darting around as if to check if anyone she knew was there. And the sizing was awful, and ridiculous. She wasn’t an 18 in regular skirts, more like a 10, but uniform skirts had their own system, apparently.

“One moment. Paying is over there, by Devora. Devora? There’s a line waiting for you. Shirts are all along the wall behind you, whatever we have left is out. I have another order coming in tomorrow or the next day, call or come. What did you want?”

Three of us answered at once.

“Chedva? We need more of the plaid skirts — no, the blue and yellow ones — and the jumpers. And three skirts… what size did you say? For her? I’d go bigger — Chedva? Bring out a bunch of the blue pleated skirts in large and extra-large, try them on and see what fits.”

Ruti’s face was burning.

And that was even before the skirts made an appearance — two were too small, one was too wide, and another fit fine but trailed to the floor. The lengths were all inconsistent, they were a mix of brands and pleat styles, and the saleswoman was mobbed.

We left eventually, with one skirt and some shirts, and a long list of what we still needed to come back to get. Probably the only thing worse than the thought of going again was the thought of needing to put Ruti through it again.

Just did the uniform run with Ruti. Attempt #1, I texted my sister. She has an all-boy family, how smart is she?

Her reply was instantaneous. Oyyy… get yourself an ice coffee XL right now

XL. Huh.

Am I the only one who thinks it’s just not ok? I typed.

Bracha called a moment later. “Figured you needed more moral support. I remember those days, piling into the store with Ma, everyone climbing over each other, nothing in the right size. What’s it like now? Any better?”

“Nope. And that’s what’s crazy. Why hasn’t it changed in twenty years?”

I thought of Ruti’s face, hot with shame. “Haven’t we, like, made progress on this? A kid like Ruti, she’s not small, you know. It’s embarrassing for her, being singled out as the girl who needs the larger sizes. Trying on things with no privacy, everyone seeing the saleslady yell across the store to get her a bigger size. It’s like, everything we try to avoid. All the things we talk about, positive body image and no shaming, and it all goes out the window when it’s time to buy school uniforms.”

“You’re so right,” Bracha said. “Why doesn’t anyone just open a store that does it differently? I bet it would be a wild success.”

And then — right then — Plaid & Pleats was born.

R

uti had been our first “customer,” prancing around the boutique in her uniform. With the time, space, and huge supply in my living room, she’d had the chance to try every skirt, every style. Figure out the sizing and length and skirt style that looked best, choose the shirts she liked, try on various styles and settle on what she felt most comfortable with — all without shame, without feeling like anyone was looking or judging or commenting about her size.

Seeing her confident, happy, and smiling at herself in the mirror was all the confirmation I needed that this was the right thing to do.

Because she deserved this, and so did every other girl in her position. I hadn’t had this opportunity, and neither had my daughter — until now. But we were going to change that.

W

ithin a day of the ad getting out, we were fully booked. Overbooked. I’d planned to offer morning and evening appointments — now I was scheduling them in for 14 hours a day, solid, and still turning people down. I hired a salesgirl to cover shifts so I could take a break, breathe, see my kids, and then another one to share the evening with me. I was still in the store at least ten hours a day, but it was good. Crazy, but good.

This was a brand new business, we had to figure out systems, obviously, but the success? It was wild. All we could have hoped for. The hype, the positive feedback, the friends bringing friends. Feedback from the mothers: Finally, a place to take our daughters that treats them with dignity, with respect, like a person. I can’t believe you turned buying uniforms into an experience. Wow — kol hakavod to you, this is amazing.

“My friends all love the store!” Ruti told me. “Everyone who came already is telling everyone else that they have to come. Like, Baila told me how her mother couldn’t believe that it was so quiet, and you could get them everything they needed without a hundred other people shouting over them… and you had all the styles in stock and the service was sooo good. Oh, and the swag is the best part, everyone loves it.”

Of course, new store, swag, it was a given. But I was glad to hear that we’d hit the mark. If it was becoming a thing to shop for uniform at Plaid & Pleats, it meant we were getting something right. Making this an experience that didn’t leave girls feeling belittled. Giving them dignity, respect, a comfortable experience. Maybe even fun.

And so I pushed through the insane days and hectic nights. I scheduled more and more appointments, begged my salesgirls to extend their hours, hired more cleaning help and ordered takeout for three weeks straight. My family put up with it — they were almost as invested as I was in the store’s success. And this was seasonal — schools would start, everyone would have their uniform, and I’d switch to evening hours only. Automate more, maybe set up a website for online orders, have the salesgirls man the store some days….

That time would come. But for now, all that mattered was that we’d done it: made the leap, opened the store, and from the huge demand and feedback, it seemed we were doing exactly what I’d hoped to achieve.

B

ut then there were the other voices. The other kind of feedback. People talking, complaining. That new store, it’s so expensive, raising the prices, raising the standards. Why shouldn’t we be able to afford the basics?

Not to my face. Just… in the background. Comments to my kids. One of Ruti’s more outspoken classmates: You know the other store sells school shirts for half the price?

I was in the grocery of all places when I overheard it. Two women I didn’t know, talking loudly about… something. Did one of them mention skirts?

“…so expensive. And so unnecessary,” the shorter woman, with the straight blond wig, was saying loudly. “Raising the standards, again, for no good reason. Couldn’t there be one thing that our girls can get at cost price?”

“Totally agree.” Her friend, dark and emphatic, nodded along. “Everything in my daughter’s world needs to be brand name, trending, whatever. The shoes, the sweaters, even the scrunchies — can you imagine? And now even the basic school uniform needs to come wrapped in tissue paper with a branded boutique logo on the front of the bag.” She shook her head.

“And all those luxurious extras — we end up paying double the price. And you know how much markup the owner must be taking? At the expense of parents who now need to give in to their teens and buy the latest luxury item, again.”

Somehow, I kept mechanically moving down the aisle. Tossed some items in my cart without seeing them. My list danced in front of my eyes. I couldn’t focus.

That’s what people thought? That I was out there to promote luxury and — and make money at other people’s expense? Honestly, my store wasn’t even breaking even yet. The cost of the renovations, the marketing, the supply, the staff — I was working literally around the clock and not making back any profit at all, yet. The price they were paying? It was for dignity, for operating a store in which girls could get what they needed without feeling shamed, or crushed, or having to push their way to get a single uniform skirt.

They wanted rock-bottom prices? Fine, go to the basement store. It hadn’t closed down, in fact, as far as I knew, it was running a brisk and steady business, as usual. Not everyone is coming to me — far from it. So what was their problem?

Of course, I wound up right behind the two women in the checkout line. They’d moved on to some other topic of conversation — toilet training, it sounded like. But then Blonde turned around, and her eyes fell on the bag I was carrying. Oh — right, I had one of my branded bags with me.

“Hey — you bought in the new uniform store? We were just talking about it.”

Her dark haired friend leaned in. “Yes, tell us what it’s like. I mean, I can’t imagine I’d ever shop there, but you tell us — you found it was worth the prices? Or is it just a fad, like all the teens are going to get it out their system, and then go back to the cost price store next year? Because honestly, which mother is going to keep putting up with this turning school uniform shopping into a boutique experience….”

A mother who watched her daughter be shamed, year after year. A mother who has had enough of overlooking a system that doesn’t work.

For a moment, I thought about just shrugging and moving on, but I’d kind of hit my limit. “Actually,” I said, with a tight smile. “I own the store. And I have probably hundreds of happy customers who would be glad to share their positive experience.”

If I could tell the Ruchami one thing, it would be: I’m not looking to raise standards or make uniforms unaffordable. I’m doing this to prevent my daughter — and so many others — from being shamed. 

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1076)