New York
If one man's meat is another man's poison, then one man's fashion can be another man's offence. That may explain why saggy trousers have become a target for the authorities.
Influenced by the hip-hop culture, an increasing number of boys have been wearing trousers dangling below the hips with their underwear exposed in recent years. But now the fashion is under attack, as more and more 'grown-ups' in positions of power consider it to be shameful and disrespectful, and, as a result, an increasing number of towns have been debating whether to make the style illegal.
But in New York City, the fashion is likely to be legal a while longer. The Department of Education, despite its iron-fist policy on other aspects of school life, doesn't seem to be interested in kids' wardrobes.
In some ways, today's New York is an unlikely place for tolerance towards saggy trousers. It is, after all, a city where a series of stiff dress codes are set by investment bankers, socialites and celebrities, where one mismatching accessory is likely to be a damaging faux pas, and a city that likes to regard itself as a fashion centre of the world. (Fashion week is about to start.) It is also a city that has a reputation as a 'nanny state' for setting everything from dancing and smoking bans to noise restrictions and curbs on trans-fats in food.
The campus dress codes in many other school districts in neighbouring New Jersey and Connecticut are often pages long, with prohibitions on everything from flip flops to sunglasses and specifics about how tight is too tight, how short is too short and how much underwear showing is too much. But in the new version of its discipline code, New York's Department of Education says children may only be disciplined for their outfits when they are 'unsafe or disruptive to the educational process'.
'We don't have any type of standard dress policy. Most of that happens at the school level. So there are some schools where you are not allowed to wear hats inside and others where you are,' said Dina Paul Parks, a department spokeswoman. The agency has no specific view on saggy trousers.