Curious Parents Education Resources

Kids Fashion Identity Sends Signals
Publisher's Note

“Are you crazy?”  The rolling eyes…the mock horror. “Nobody will be wearing a dress!” “Yeah Dad, and none of the boys will be wearing weird pants and a tie—where do you even buy clothes like that anyway?”  Where did these strange, strident hipsters come from and what did they do with my nice, neatly attired and obedient children?  

The rolling eyes come into play when Dad launches into his standard spiel about how your appearance influences first impressions and how you won’t be comfortable in nice clothes when you have to wear them if you’re not accustomed to wearing them.  Kids that wear unfamiliar styles tend to fidget and fuss. 

“Why can’t you guys just pick a look and stick with it or pick a bunch of different looks like bohemian, urban sophisticate, hippy or prep and use them all.”  The problems, of course, are the friends, the stores and the media.  At some point in their development, each of our kids began to pay more attention to the opinions of their friends than their parents’.  The peers are very intolerant of anyone that’s different and have very strong opinions of what our children should be wearing.  Kids wear fashions that their friends will think are cool.  The stores: they cater to the kids’ impulses and what sells the most—it’s hard to find something in the stores that’s not athletic wear or made out of sweat pants fabric, sleek synthetics or actually has a collar on it.  I find that the specialty stores and boutiques have more interesting clothing than a lot of the department stores and brand stores because they have to serve a niche outside the mainstream.

The media popularizes fashions that the kids want to emulate, but don’t really understand.  Teenage girls dressed like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera’s stage outfits are sending out sexual signals they’re not mature enough to handle; boys dressed like gangsters are broadcasting anger; and sweats or athletic clothing are just sloppy and too casual, communicating indifference.  When we take the time to explain to kids that their fashion intention (looking cool like Christina) is sometimes very different from the impressions they’re actually communicating (sexual precociousness), I find that most of them understand and adjust their fashion sense.

Kids are deliberately experimenting with their identity.  They are making decisions about friends, school, jobs, choosing their fashions and even their behavior based upon who and what they want to be and how they want to present themselves to the world.  There’s something very important about choosing what “their” clothes are and not automatically adopting “our” clothes that helps them process and internalize who they are and want to be.  Our job as parents is to help them understand when there’s a gap between their intended fashion statement and what the world will actually think.

While I do have certain fashions that I prefer each of my the kids to wear, I realize that they have to create their own identity and hope that they eventually move beyond the current trend to making a positive affirmative statement about who they are.  In pursuit of that goal, I continue with my spiels about the statements they are making with their fashion choices, and try to understand (and get them to articulate) what they’re trying to communicate through their fashion choices. 

Our Editor, Matt Stringer, and his team put together a survey of this year’s back to school fashion trends to help us parents understand where the peers and fashionistas are leading our kids this year.  His work is based upon research and interviews with leading buyers and fashion experts at the top brands and retailers.  Start practicing your spiels now.

John Piccone is publisher of Curious Parents