All Dressed Up in a Tux and Nowhere to Go : Prom night: Heidi Lypps’ choice of formal wear brought an ultimatum from St. Bonaventure officials.

St. Bonaventure High School junior Heidi Lypps thought she would have been right in step with the tuxedo she planned to wear for her prom tonight.

But she found that officials of the Catholic school in Ventura have drawn a line on the dance floor that only girls in gowns may cross.

Lypps, 17, said she thought of wearing a tuxedo to the prom after the success she had wearing a man’s tailored suit to a “Backward Dance” at St. Bonaventure in January--with the blessing of school officials.

“The girl asks the guy and picks him up. I didn’t want to wear a dress for that,” she said from her home near Piru. “And everyone seemed to like it.”

Officials at St. Bonaventure ruled, however, that a tuxedo would be inappropriate unless worn by a male student. Brother Paulinus Horkan, St. Bonaventure’s principal, was terse on the subject.

“We expect the girls to wear a proper dress at the prom, that’s all,” he said.

The decision to ban girls in tuxedos at St. Bonaventure touched off a modest controversy of sorts among other public and private school officials in the county.

Supporting the St. Bonaventure policy was Buena High School Assistant Principal Gordon Whitcomb, who said he does not condone unconventional dressing of any kind.

“We’d like the prom to be a little more classy than that,” Whitcomb said. “We wouldn’t let a boy show up in girl’s clothes, so we won’t let the girls dress as guys.”

But officials at several other schools in the area said they would not consider Lypps’ attire a problem. Educators at Ventura High School, Villanova Preparatory School in Ojai and the Ojai Valley School all said they had no problem with girls wearing tuxedos.

Susana Aroe, vice principal at Ojai’s Nordhoff High School, was amused to find it was an issue.

“We’d have no objection,” she said. “We’re concerned about more important things, like drinking and driving.”

Area stores say the definition of “dressed up” is changing for females.

“We rent tuxedos to women all the time,” said Lynn Klufetos, manager of Gingiss Formal wear in Thousand Oaks. Klufetos said couples often rent twin tuxedos for holiday parties or proms. “Girls look great in a tux,” she said.

Lypps said she hasn’t worn a dress since second grade and that she doesn’t own any skirts except the school uniform. Happiest on a horse or hiking in the hills, Lypps said she feels uncomfortable in dresses.

“They make me feel like an object,” she said. “I think I’m taken more seriously when I’m not wearing a dress.”

Lypps confessed, with apologies, that she has bowed to pressure and bought a black dress for the prom. But she hopes not to wear it more than once.

“It would have been cheaper to rent the tux,” she said.