Kids' Clothes: Slave to Fashion
Submitted by
Kate Tipton
My son wore a $40 Polo onesie home from the hospital. It was excessive but so darn cute. Little did I know that it'd be the start of an obsession.
Fast-forward a decade and my son is still wearing brand-name clothes—pretty much exclusively. He doesn't know Calvin Klein from Kenneth Cole, but I do. And so I find myself buying the latest designer fashions in youth sizes. I just can't bear the thought of my kid going to school in Target jeans or, worse, Wal-Mart sneakers.
It's not like I'm going into debt to keep my kid outfitted in name brands. We can afford the things I buy, but there is a little part of me that wonders if I should afford it. It occurs to me that our money could be better spent than on a $100 pair of Nikes he'll outgrow in three months.
Still, I feel like I'm somehow protecting him by buying him designer clothes. I really do believe the kids might make fun of him if he wears jeans with the wrong label on the pocket. (This is certainly a throwback to my own youth, when I got teased for having the wrong sneakers, jackets, hair ...) Yet even as I acknowledge that I'm sending the wrong message about peer pressure and fitting in, I'm scouring fashion mags for the latest trends to keep my kid en vogue.
I think it'd be different if my boy had demanded that Lacoste sweatshirt. But, so far, he's amazingly indifferent about what he wears. That fact reassures me that, despite my own fashionista tendencies, my child has managed to remain reasonably well-adjusted. He'd happily wear secondhand clothes or a shirt off the rack from Wal-Mart—but don't count on me buying it for him.
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