Children's wear taking cues from the fashion world

Adults and children alike want to look like teenagers

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By Emmi Sjöholm
     
      According to the experts in the branch, Finnish children dress in a much more adult style these days than they did a decade ago.
      The clothes in question are nevertheless not the much-criticised crop tops coquettishly revealing the navel, but the ideas are being taken from the world of high fashion.
      Many adult fashion houses, such as Burberry and Esprit, have brought children’s lines into their catalogues.
     
Retailers have every reason to focus on children, as in a year or two these young consumers will no longer be shephered around stores by their mums but will become significant customers in their own right.
      If we are to believe some American studies, children can learn brand loyalty as early as the toddler stage of two or three, and one lifelong customer relationship born out of that loyalty can be worth nearly USD 100,000 (getting on for EUR 70,000) to the lucky retailer, reports researcher Ilona Mikkonen from the Helsinki School of Economics.
     
Wearing a fetching pair of lilac-coloured Converse trainers on her feet, fourth-grader Heta Löfman, 10, is browsing over the pre-teen makeup shelves at BR-Lelut, a toy shop in the Kamppi Center shopping mall in Helsinki.
      “Blue and black are my favourite colours in clothing. I don’t like very girlish shades like pink”, the girl says, as she tries on some lip gloss.
      Heta is dressed in a blue zipped hoodie and check trousers, the braces for which dangle casually around her hips. Clearly their purpose is not to hold up the aforementioned trousers but they are a necessary fashion accessory. Löfman is only allowed to wear makeup at home.
     
There is nothing intrinsically “new” about the desire of pre-teens to look older. “You look older than your age” is seen by many children as a compliment.
      This also affects Löfman’s choices. According to her mother Seija Laine , the girl avoids wearing her brown corduroy trousers.
      “But I don’t to look like a second-grader”, says Heta. Besides, it is important that the clothes she wears form a harmonious whole. “It’s difficult to match anything with those trousers.”
     
The harshest sentences are handed down on Barbie T-shirts and coveralls or dungarees, because “they’re so childish”. Löfman and other members of her class at school rejected coveralls en masse about a year ago, because others - the boys in particular - were laughing at them.
      Heta Löfman is waiting impatiently for the time when adult clothes will fit her. Some clothes manufacturers have expanded their adult lines to the point where you can get scaled-down jeans for the under-10s.
     
While the child is turned into a clothing store customer in good time, before he or she can really start consuming in earnest, the retailers are working on the parents, too.
      It might well be an attractive thought for Mum that she goes to the same shops as her underage daughter.
      "It’s a common trend now that people of all ages are being put into the same teenwear mould", says Terhi-Anna Wilska , a senior researcher at the Department of Marketing of the Turku School of Economics.
      Heta Löfman, too, is doing her bit to get her mother to throw out those old clothes and dress a bit younger.
     
Children have a significant impact on the family’s shopping habits, argues Ilona Mikkonen.
      It has been estimated in the United States that the direct or indirect influence on buying decisions of children under the age of 12 years is worth an annual USD 600 billion (EUR 400 billion).
      "In the old days you had to sway mothers and fathers to be able to sell children’s gear. Now primarily you have to convince the juniors in the family, even in the case of things for adults", charges Mikkonen, deliberately stretching the point.
      In the Finnish case, marketing directed towards children is pretty seriously constrained by law.
      According to the Americans, however, even the smallest details can have an effect. Children will swallow and remember such things as a beer commercial swarming with frogs or an advertisement for a new car model that uses scale-model cars.
     
And can adult-leaning clothing choices have an impact on childhood?
      In the view of sociology docent and gender researcher Sari Näre, the attitudes of friends and adults play a key role.
      "Girls typically find themselves having to balance things very carefully on the sexual attractiveness scale. Girls get sold sexy clothing, but at the same time there is an expectation that the clothes do not lead to taking things too far and doing something that might damage one’s reputation."
     
The overly abrupt breaking-off of childhood before time does not augur well for psychological wellbeing.
      “It means a person is cut off from that freedom offered by childhood to live things through in the imagination - it leaves unused the resting-place for the mind that this offers.”
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 13.1.2008

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EMMI SJÖHOLM / Helsingin Sanomat
emmi.sjoholm@hs.fi