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Strollerderby
If you’ve ever dressed a young girl, you know girls’ fashions can be problematic. There are the string bikinis for toddlers. There are the sparkly high heels sized for three-year-olds, just waiting to snap an ankle. There are endless frilly skirts, not so great for climbing monkey bars.
Then there are the t-shirts. There’s been a whole string of scandals recently about t-shirts with slogans like “Too pretty to do homework” on them. A lot of these awful shirts have been pulled from the market after a hue and cry on the Internet about their offensive content. Good work, Internet. Those bad shirts needed to go.
Sadly, they were just the tip of the iceberg. Jezebel took a good look at what’s still on the market for girls’ clothing, and it’s pretty scary.
School uniforms creeping younger
Today in the Wall Street Journal, Sue Shellenbarger talks about the growing trend of preschools and even daycares requiring their little attendees to wear uniforms.
The benefits: even three-year-olds are comparing dresses and judging each others’ fashion choices. The interest in clothes detracts from kids being able to focus on work.
“Children come in comfortable and prepared to focus. They’re not worried about what their neighbor is wearing or what their mom didn’t let them wear today,”…Uniforms reinforce feeling part of a group for children. Even in preschool, “if you put a blue shirt on a child, he or she knows ‘I’m getting ready for school.’ ”
I may complain sometimes about negotiating the day’s attire with my three-year-old, but there’e something kind of depressing about the idea of sending him out the door in a blue polo shirt and khakis every day: Continue reading »
Jeggings: The Latest Trend
“I like your pants,” my old college friend Jana told my 5-year-old Ruby over the weekend.
“They’re not pants. They’re jeggings!” Ruby exclaimed and Jana and I had to laugh.
Just the name “jeggings” is pretty humorous, but it was even funnier hearing a 5-year-old speak so confidently about her fashion choices. Ruby looks like a rock ‘n roll chick when she wears them (especially when she’s got on her hot pink sequin flats).
To me, the name — and the idea — of jeggings is ridiculous. But at 42 and a size 12, I’m not the target audience. Instead, they’re perfect for skinny, celebrity moms. In fact, according to Famecrawler, “A-List moms Heidi Klum, Gwenyth Paltrow and Jessica Alba have all been spotted wearing the latest trend.” They’re all the rage with the school kids too.
For those of you who haven’t heard about jeggings yet, they’re denim leggings which look like skin tight jeans. But are they pants? Not really. I pretty much let Ruby wear them as she would leggings, but at 5, she looks adorable in anything (that’s not Ruby in the picture).
My Strollerderby colleague Robin Aronson wrote about her challenge in teaching her daughter the difference between tights and leggings. Instead of fighting her 5-year-old when she wanted to wear footless tights to school, Robin acquiesced. “I let her prance and preen in her leggings and tried to ignore the telltale seams on her bottom. She’s five and she’s happy and when she’s fifteen, she’ll know the difference between leggings and tights. At least, one can only hope.” Continue reading »
Onesies for Cute Babies
Whether we’re in an office or at home, what we wear sends a message to the world. But what about our babies? Are their onesies their way of expressing themselves?
Obviously, I realize that parents are the ones who buy the onesies and dress the babies. So I guess the question should really be: are parents using onesies to send a message about their baby to the world? If so, what sort of sort of statement is your baby’s onesie making? Continue reading »
How safe are your child's toys?
Federal regulations for children’s products are finally being enforced. That should ensure safer toys for our children by taking dangerous toys off the market. That’s good news, right?
Not for toy manufacturers, who are scrambling to cope with the new rules. Not by making their products safer, as we might hope. No, they’re hoping to get around the rules by pretending their products are not intended for children.
Classy.
The Consumer Products Safety Commission has to define what a “toy” is, and thus which products fall under these rules. You’d think it’s pretty simple, but nothing ever is.
From Stella McCartney's new kids collection.
It’s fashion week in New York City, which serves as a bi-annual reminder to me about how ridiculous the modeling industry is. Once upon a time, before I had a baby, I – like so many other aspirational New York gals – loved to read fashion rags like Glamour. I remember pulling a copy out at the OBGYN’s office when I was about 6 months pregnant, and one of the doctors in the practice turned to me and said, “You still read Glamour? That’ll change in about 3 months.” I laughed, but I secretly thought, “Ha. But what you don’t know is that I’ve got a subscription to W.” I loved gawking at the ridiculous spreads with themes like “back to school” and “at the office” filled with models covered from head-to-toe in peacock feathers and newspaper print, as if that’s what respectable women wear to work. Why is it that high-fashion models are always jumping mid-air in a concave pose? And why are you covered in war paint holding a baby? Are you going to eat the baby, Brunella? I don’t understand why you’re so angry.
Needless to say, when I read that Stella McCartney is launching her own children’s line, I laughed to myself. Because that’s exactly what kids need: to look like depressed little members of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. “Gee, Mommy, you know what I’d love? Some more grey t-shirts. They go great with my developing sense of ennui.” Continue reading »
Katie Holmes is a beautiful woman who has made some unusual fashion choices over the years. She always looks pretty, but some of the outfits she steps out in look like they were put together by a toddler. The bright blue pumps paired with a shocking red dress come immediately to mind. But if she sometimes appears to have been styled by a child, there’s a very good reason: Katie Holmes lets her daughter Suri dress her. Continue reading »
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