HOLY DRESS CODE!

PEOPLE Freshman DART board member ANNE MCKINNEY is learning that public officialdom has its price: You just can’t wear your favorite T-shirt (the one with the Day-Glo condoms on it) or slip on your Batman sneakers and still hope to win influence with those mass transit missionaries in the Hickey-Freeman suits.

McKinney, a Piano homemaker and political activist, was named to the DART board last November. Ever since, she’s been warned to tone down her teenager-meets-middie-age look.

“It’s just been hinted to me very strongly that it wasn’t appropriate to go bopping around town in a pair of blue jeans and bat sneakers, ” she says.

The sneakers in question-Anne’s black Converse high-tops with the yellow bat logos-caused quite a stir at a recent transit convention in Tempe, Ariz.

On her return, McKinney was gently upbraided for her choice of footwear by L. G. FULLER, DART assistant executive director for operations.

“While the tennis shoes are very cute, I thought it wasn’t appropriate for that type of meeting ” Fuller opines. “I think the way we project ourselves is important to carrying out our mission. “

McKinney took the advice but suggests that DART has more pressing problems to worry about. “It amazed me, ” she says, “that the first thing they talked about was my fashion faux pas. “

McKinney now wears the shoes only for gardening, and she’s purchased some dress-for-success knit ensembles and suits. But she says she’ll keep one key ingredient of her old wardrobe, which she wears under a navy blazer: “A Sting very tasteful Sting T-shirt. “