Stella from 'Jonas'

School uniforms exist to make students appear neat and ready to learn and to create a bond of conformity.

Then there are the creatively dressed students, albeit in uniforms, at Horace Mantis Academy on Disney Channel's Sunday series Jonas. One, Stella (Chelsea Staub), is a burgeoning fashion designer.

"Stella is one of those characters that probably wakes up in the morning decides and what mood she's in and dresses accordingly," Staub says. "In every episode, she has a different look. In some episodes, it's very Parisian, with a beret, little sweaters -- Reese Witherspoon, Legally Blonde, very proper. In one, she'll wear hot-pink lipstick and a tie as a choker and motorcycle boots with the school uniform. She is all over the place. She has a flower in everything, which I love.

"When I first met with Jane (Janiger, the costume designer), I had scoured every magazine," Staub says. "I cut out looks and pasted (pictures) into a notebook. I circled hats and necklaces, things we could do with school uniforms and found out we both loved flowers."

Janiger knew she must work within a limited palette of cranberry, navy, light blue, and a slate-blue and cranberry plaid.

"For Stella, I got a navy jacket, and I make it more a bell sleeve," says Janiger, who once designed clothes for fashion houses.

As fashion-conscious as many teenagers are, Stella is more so because she is the fictional Lucas brothers' stylist. "The Disney people wanted her more cutting-edge, a little more out there than other Disney shows," Janiger says. "She is accessorized and very put together; her shoes match her headband."

Janiger has found items at Wasteland in Los Angeles and at Loehmann's, the store famed for its community dressing rooms, where brutal honesty among the female clients is the custom.

There, Janiger has picked up cranberry blouses with puffy sleeves and skirts from Theory and Prada. She outfits Stella in vests and tops from Free People and H&M.

Janiger sews a lot of outfits "so you don't look at every show and see the same things," she says.

She completes Stella's look with shoes from DSW and Steve Madden and Betsey Johnson jewelry. The biggest influence for Stella's look, Janiger says, is Staub, though the actress maintains she has no fashion sense.

"I follow what she comes in looking like," Janiger says. "She just looks gorgeous. It's so great, and she is so comfortable with it. And that's not true that she has no knack.

"She came in with this book, and I had a little book I showed her that I had presented to Disney," Janiger says. "I listened to what they said. I saw what Chelsea wanted to do, and we tried to combine everything."

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