Zeno's Bar & Grill

Yesterday’s NY Times has an article on mini-fashionistas who thirst for the likes of Juicy Couture and Baby Phat. The poster girl for the article is a four-year old New York girl who is shown on the front page of the Thursday Styles section surrounded by her various designer pieces, and then later in the article, getting a pedicure.

The front page photo makes her look very much as if she's just been plunked down by an adult who arranged all her belongings on and around her, a sort of microcosm of the whole debate. I, for one, find it very hard to believe that this four-year old "has a mind of her own" when it comes to choosing designer clothes, as her mother claims. She's probably getting the idea from somewhere...um, like the mom who volunteered her for this article, maybe?

I guess it could all be written off as good, girly, fashion fun if the clothes weren’t so dang expensive. The whole thing just feels like another assault by the marketing machine.

The other problem seems to be that so many of the clothes are miniature versions of adult outfits. Even the editor of Cookie, a magazine that glorifies children’s high end fashion, had this to say, “You get this idea that there is a kind of lost innocence…the gap is diminishing between what’s meant for children and what’s intended for their elders. I find that a little sad.”

I guess I’m lucky that my biggest problem these days is convincing my daughter that knee socks really do look eccentric with shorts.

--Melanie