Clothing for tweens

My daughter is 9 and is getting to a point where she wants to pick
clothes for herself. We were in a hurry yesterday and she needed a few
new tops and pants, so my husband and I took her down to Sears with
express purpose of looking at the Lands' End stuff. Well, it's between
seasons, and there really wasn't much. So instead of just conceding the
whole thing as a loss, my daughter and husband started piling up some of
the cheapler made Sears stuff to try on.

I had told my husband if he wanted to look at clothes for our daughter
in general, I wouldn't take her Sears, we'd go somewhere else. I got
frustrated because the clothes they happened to be picking out weren't
very good quality (thin material and so on). Finally, I did pull the
now-disgruntled family out of there empty handed. Later in the day, we
picked up some pants for my daughter from Old Navy and some shirts from
the Nordstrom Rack. Now mind you, these items were priced within a few
dollars of the Sears stuff...I tried to explain to my daughter that it
wasn't the price on your outfit or the label on your clothing, but
whether or not something is reasonably well made and would hold up after
several washings.

We're just starting this learning curve, she and I both. I'm not stuck
on Old Navy or the Rack, and I'm not interested in paying big bucks for
kids clothes. And I do want The Kid to feel like she has a say in her
clothes. Where are good places to take The Kid where she can look around
at reasonable-quality, mid-priced clothing and pick (pretty much) at
will? I know a lot of people are fans of Target, but though there's some
things I do find there, they aren't my place of choice. Any other places
a tween can roam around and shop, and still come away with clothes Mom
will approve of?

Thanks.

beeswing

wrote:

Where are good places to take The Kid where she can look around
at reasonable-quality, mid-priced clothing and pick (pretty much) at
will?

Frankly, you can't beat secondhand clothes for this kind of thing. It's usually
very obvious which stuff isn't wearing well -- the clothes that are going to
pill and look nasty already are. Plus she can make a few mistakes and learn
something without busting the budget.

It is a lot harder to shop for specific stuff at a specific time, though, and
you'd still have to veto sleazy stuff. There are a few consignment stores
around that would have higher-level things, but they are more expensive, and do
tend to peter out around this age (though I did get some nice stuff at the
Ballard Me'n'Moms the other day -- Sophia got a red velour dress, just big
enough on her that I think it will work for next winter, and a pair of Gap
jeans, and Emily got a brand-new-looking Ralph Lauren plaid flannel shirt, and
the total was under $20).

--Helen

In article , H Schinske wrote:
wrote:

Where are good places to take The Kid where she can look around
at reasonable-quality, mid-priced clothing and pick (pretty much) at
will?

Frankly, you can't beat secondhand clothes for this kind of thing.

I agree with this, especially if the child is growing fast still or
changing taste in clothing. Also, the training in how to find the
good stuff among the junk in the second-hand stores will be invaluable
in college. Seeing how some clothes continue to look good despite
changing trends in fashion, while others look incredibly stupid, can
also help in developing taste that resists the churning of the fashion
industry, so that as an adult one can assemble a long-lasting wardrobe.


--
Kevin Karplus http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~karplus
life member (LAB, Adventure Cycling, American Youth Hostels)
Effective Cycling Instructor #218-ck (lapsed)
Professor of Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz
Undergraduate and Graduate Director, Bioinformatics
Affiliations for identification only.

I think everybody runs into this. It might be a good time to teach her
some of the rudimentary sewing skills and talk about how things wear and
wash. Then go shopping. I personally think JCPenney is a pretty good
place to go with kids that age. *Most* of the stuff is tasteful. What
isn't is another good spring board for discussion. The sales are pretty
good too.

Karen

Beeswing wrote:

We're just starting this learning curve, she and I both. I'm not stuck
on Old Navy or the Rack, and I'm not interested in paying big bucks for
kids clothes. And I do want The Kid to feel like she has a say in her
clothes. Where are good places to take The Kid where she can look around
at reasonable-quality, mid-priced clothing and pick (pretty much) at
will? I know a lot of people are fans of Target, but though there's some
things I do find there, they aren't my place of choice. Any other places
a tween can roam around and shop, and still come away with clothes Mom
will approve of?


I have issues with my 10 year old on sizing (she's tiny), so
we tend to shop for pants, anyway, at a few stores where we
can get slim sizes plus the adjusting hidden elastic
waistband thingy. Old Navy, Gap (costly, but will actually
fit the child) and Target are some of our staples.
Interestingly, I've found more inappropriate clothes (read:
sleazy) at department stores than these chains. JC Penney
has great stuff in the catalogs, but some of the stuff on
the floor is, shall we say, a bit mature for my child. She
likes to shop in the Lands' End and LL Bean kid catalog.

Mom to a future clothes horse-
Lesley

On Mon, 23 Feb 2004 14:27:22 EST, "Beeswing" wrote:

My daughter is 9 and is getting to a point where she wants to pick
clothes for herself. We were in a hurry yesterday and she needed a few
new tops and pants, so my husband and I took her down to Sears with
express purpose of looking at the Lands' End stuff. Well, it's between
seasons, and there really wasn't much. So instead of just conceding the
whole thing as a loss, my daughter and husband started piling up some of
the cheapler made Sears stuff to try on.

I had told my husband if he wanted to look at clothes for our daughter
in general, I wouldn't take her Sears, we'd go somewhere else. I got
frustrated because the clothes they happened to be picking out weren't
very good quality (thin material and so on). [...].I tried to explain to my daughter that it
wasn't the price on your outfit or the label on your clothing, but
whether or not something is reasonably well made and would hold up after
several washings.

I don't live in the US and can't suggest specific stores, but I
thought I'd comment on some of the family-dynamics stuff.

First of all, it sounds as if you and your husband don't quite have
the same ideas about clothes-shopping priorities. One way of
resolving this would be for your husband to leave the clothes-shopping
to you, but I don't think that's ideal. And you've already learned
the problems of going shopping in a hurry without an agreement ahead
of time of what to expect.

As you say, it's hard to teach about clothing quality without giving
the message of "buying labels". You could try letting her make some
of the choices herself now, and talk later about how well different
things lasted. If the Land's End turtleneck still looks nice next
year, and the Walmart licensed-character one has been in the mending
pile since it was a month old, point that out.

Have you been keeping track of how much a season it takes to clothe
your daughter? If you move towards a clothing-allowance model, it's
useful to know how much money is appropriate. (For us, I think it
started at $35CDN a month for a 12yo 5 years ago, with shoes, boots,
coats, and dressy outfits bought separately.)

Other posters have suggested encouraging thrift-shop shopping. This
is more likely to work well if (a) parents wear some second-hand
things themselves, (b) other peers boast about their thrift-shop
finds, and/or (c) the kid has some incentive to save money on
clothes, such as making an allowance go farther. Our older teens buy
many of their clothes at an army/navy surplus store and at Mark's Work
Warehouse.

I noticed elsewhere in the thread that different posters use the word
"sleazy" in either the sense of shoddy goods made of poor-quality
fabric, or the sense of clothing in poor taste. They strike me as
quite different objections, and it occurs to me that kids and
teenagers probably wouldn't be aware of the first meaning.

Louise

I wrote, earlier:

my daughter and husband started piling up some of
the cheapler made Sears stuff to try on.

Um, "cheapler"?

Obviously, I had trouble deciding between "cheaper" and "cheaply"...but I
hadn't meant to split the difference. OOPS!

beeswing

"Kevin Karplus" wrote in message
...
In article , H Schinske
wrote:
wrote:

Where are good places to take The Kid where she can look around
at reasonable-quality, mid-priced clothing and pick (pretty much) at
will?

Frankly, you can't beat secondhand clothes for this kind of thing.

I agree with this, especially if the child is growing fast still or
changing taste in clothing. Also, the training in how to find the
good stuff among the junk in the second-hand stores will be invaluable
in college.

Ditto -- I did a ton of shopping for my 11 year old at the Bellevue Goodwill
Store, and we got lots of nice, fashionable stuff that fit (she'd outgrown a
bunch of her old clothes) for a very reasonable price.


--
Warm Regards,

Claire Petersky
Please replace earthlink for mouse-potato and .net for .com
Home of the meditative cyclist:
http://home.earthlink.net/~cpetersky/Welcome.htm
New Tiferet (http://www.tiferet.net) CD out -- contact me for copies.

In article , Louise wrote:
I noticed elsewhere in the thread that different posters use the word
"sleazy" in either the sense of shoddy goods made of poor-quality
fabric, or the sense of clothing in poor taste. They strike me as
quite different objections, and it occurs to me that kids and
teenagers probably wouldn't be aware of the first meaning.

I believe that "sleazy" started as a technical term for fabric that is
woven with fewer threads per inch than the yarn and weave structure
call for. It results in a fabric in which the yarns tend to slide
against each other producing holes. It also tends to tear easily,
though that is a function of the yarn type and quality as well.

Because sleazy fabric is cheaper to make, the word came to refer to
anything cheaply made, and later to products for the "common" taste.
It's meaning has drifted further until it often means "trashy" or
"slutty".

Personally, I prefer to reserve "sleazy" for describing cheaply made
fabric with a loose weave, and to use other words for the other
meanings it has acquired.


--
Kevin Karplus http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~karplus
life member (LAB, Adventure Cycling, American Youth Hostels)
Effective Cycling Instructor #218-ck (lapsed)
Professor of Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz
Undergraduate and Graduate Director, Bioinformatics
Affiliations for identification only.

x-no-archive:yes


Louise wrote:

On Mon, 23 Feb 2004 14:27:22 EST, "Beeswing" wrote:

. [...].I tried to explain to my daughter that it
wasn't the price on your outfit or the label on your clothing, but
whether or not something is reasonably well made and would hold up after
several washings.

I don't live in the US and can't suggest specific stores, but I
thought I'd comment on some of the family-dynamics stuff.
..
Have you been keeping track of how much a season it takes to clothe
your daughter? If you move towards a clothing-allowance model, it's
useful to know how much money is appropriate. (For us, I think it
started at $35CDN a month for a 12yo 5 years ago, with shoes, boots,
coats, and dressy outfits bought separately.)

This was my thought too although I would not have expressed it so
elegantly. If the child buys the clothing herself with her own money
and finds out what the difference is between shoddily made clothes and
well made clothes, it's much more of a lesson than if her mom just
tells her.

I never shopped at a thrift shop on any regular basis, although I was
out with dd#1 and dd#2 and some accident happened to a wool coat dd#1
was wearing. I took it to the cleaners which was right there, and
then I didn't have anything for dd#1 to wear, so a went into an
adjacent consignment/thrift shop and bought her a sweater that someone
had hand knitted out of that variable color yarn. Would never have
picked it out on purpose, but it became one of our favorite garments.

In any case, buying stuff from a thrift shop someone would still have
to have instruction on how to tell the lesser quality clothing from
the better quality clothing.

Other posters have suggested encouraging thrift-shop shopping. This
is more likely to work well if (a) parents wear some second-hand
things themselves, (b) other peers boast about their thrift-shop
finds, and/or (c) the kid has some incentive to save money on
clothes, such as making an allowance go farther. Our older teens buy
many of their clothes at an army/navy surplus store and at Mark's Work
Warehouse.
..
Louise

I got a clothes allowance when I was 12, and I started to make some of
my own clothes as my mom sewed many of my clothes for me (before and
since). I had been used to picking out patterns and material for her
to make things from. So I had been used to assessing the qualities of
material for clothing.

In my case, the allowance didn't work too well because I'd rather have
the money than the clothes - I was an extremely unfashion-conscious
child, and my criteria for clothes was a) was it comfortable and b)
were the colors nice. Trying on clothes was (and still is) anathema
to me. So I buy all my clothes by catalog now.

If she likes a particular type of clothing like Lands End, one
possibility is to shop in their Overstocks catalog, or just do the
shopping from the JC Penny catalog or from the internet to start with.

grandma Rosalie