My fashion column this week is about kid fashion, and how perhaps kids have better style sense than we do. I mean, kids really express themselves with their clothing choices. They’re fearless. They break boundaries. And little girls tend to wear a lot of tutus.
My friend, Kirsta, has a 3-year-old, Addy, and a 22-month-old, Ben. (Note: I don’t understand why when you have a child, you suddenly get all weird and start counting age by months. I think that makes me about 700 weeks old or so.)
Anyhow, a huge criteria for Addy’s style choices is color. Addy wears pink. If she doesn’t have something pink in her outfit, she carries a pink blanket (that’s how kids accessorize), even if it’s day 17 of days above 90 degrees.
In Kirsta’s words:
“Ben, on the other hand, needs colors that hide dirt well. This is really why boys wear camo. It hides dirt as well as it hides men playing in the mountains. This way, you don’t have to change their clothes after they’ve been outside for only 10 minutes.”
Another must-have accessory is stickers. Stickers, stickers, everywhere. An errant sticker marks the side of Kirsta’s toilet. They litter the backyard. There is a sticker stuck to the baseboard of the wall behind Addy’s bed. Stickers are the biggest laundry challenge that Kirsta currently faces.
Then there is my friend, Angela, who has three daughters. I assume that means three times as many stickers and pink blankey accessories. As Angela so diplomatically puts it, her girls “have their own fashion sense.” A few weeks ago, that meant one daughter wore a T-shirt, snow pant and princess gloves to church.
Add fairy wings, socks on the hands and a winter beanie and you’ve got the perfect combo.
As a kid, I was obsessed with fabrics, so I wore my satin nightgowns over everything. I also went through a “Little House on the Prairie” phase (call it Prairie Chic), and I wore my petticoat gratuitously.
My friend Annie remembers her sister used to purposely wear mismatched shoes and socks. Like a red sock and yellow shoe (Keds, baby) on one foot and a red shoe and yellow sock on the other foot. That and a Bam-Bam ponytail and the top of her head and she was ready to roll.
When my friend Brittany thinks about kid style, she immediately thinks of the children she nannies. Ben used to dress like Steve from “Blue’s Clues” when he was a toddler. Then, when Jimmy Neutron became popular, he made Brittany spike his hair with gel like Jimmy’s.
His sister, Cristina , wears bathing suits and tutus for every occassion. But of course, I find nothing odd about that.
