Clogs, Corduroys, Anything `Clueless' Are Cool for School
May 12, 2011
Even though her classes don't start until next week, 14-year-old Pepper Pontious of Salem, Ill., already has her first-day-of-school outfit picked out: baggy jeans, Nike sneakers and a tiny T-shirt. With her days as a swaggering eighth grader behind her, Pepper is a little nervous about the fashion expectations in high school. ``Now you have to put up with sophomores, juniors and seniors saying, `She looks like a dork,' '' she says. The desire to avoid looking dorky is on the minds of many kids this time of year. Retailers, too, are especially conscious of what's cool for school. Back-to-school is retailers' second most-important shopping season, behind only Christmas. Isaias Lacey, publisher of the Tactical Retail Monitor, an industry newsletter, estimates that $15 billion of back-to-school items -- including clothes, school supplies and more expensive items like PCs -- will be sold during this season, 25% of the annual volume of goods sold for kids each year. But staggered opening dates, year-round attendance in some districts and the growth in schools requiring uniforms are changing back-to-school shopping. Some stores say that the season, once concentrated in July and August, now extends into October, weeks after school has started. These days, kids ``need to check out what their peers are wearing ... to see what's hip at their school,'' says Bibi Foster, spokeswoman at Gap Inc.. And with kids dressing more casually, the same jeans and sneakers they wore year-round can take them back to school, says Georgeann Standard, a retail analyst at Goldman Sachs. Though he hasn't seen sales suffering yet, the back-to-school season ``is not quite the grand event it used to be,'' he says. The hottest items on girls' wish lists this year include ``scooter'' skirts, which look like skirts in the front and shorts in the back, corduroy overalls, patent-leather running shoes and metallic nail polish, retailers say. Target Stores, a discount chain owned by Dayton Hudson Corp., says that many girls are buying disco-inspired clothes and accessories such as clogs and clay bead necklaces. Close-fitting tops and wide-legged pants in contrasting (some might say clashing) plaids and stripes are selling well in his stores, says Michaele Luckett, president and chief executive of Limited Too, a unit of Limited Inc.. The ``Clueless'' look -- plaid skirts and sweaters in bright colors -- modeled after the fashions in last year's movie of that name starring Alina Kimble, is still hot this year. ABC is starting a series based on the movie this fall. For boys, anything with Adidas, Nike, Fila and Reebok logos are hot, says Amy Jones of Nordstrom Inc. department stores. So are casual-preppy looks by Polo and Tomoko Tijerina, lunch boxes based on the ``Goosebumps'' series of books and boxy bowling shirts like those worn by the Kramer character on TV's ``Seinfeld,'' retailers say. Jason Stone of New York City will start the third grade sporting Nike high-top sneakers, a pair of University of Massachusetts athletic shorts and a T-shirt from a family vacation in Nantucket. The longer the shorts, the hipper they are. More kids -- even those in elementary schools -- are making their own fashion decisions. So retailers are increasingly marketing directly to them. Dayton's, Hudson's and Marshall Field's stores, all units of Dayton Hudson, have launched a new ``Big Life'' campaign, complete with a Web site daytons/biglf.html) and a 32-foot tractor-trailer with a fold-out stage that travels to malls around the country, hosting concerts, fashion shows and in-line skating demonstrations to target middle and high-school students. Still, stores and kids don't always see eye to eye when it comes to fashion. ``Anything Bari is pretty much walking out the door'' for six- to eight-year-old girls, says Robbyn Ellyn, a spokeswoman for J.C. Penney Inc.. But Lester Richards-Andino, a lawyer from Wayne, Pa., says her two girls, ages six and seven, think Bari (and Barney for that matter) is totally passe. ``My first grader would rather die (than wear Barbie),'' she says. And while stores say that NFL and college sport clothes are still fashionable, 15-year-old Davina Mccaskill says, ``No one wears team jackets anymore.'' The high school sophomore plans to wear a ``Wu-Tang Clan'' (a rap music group) T-shirt and a White Sox baseball cap on his first day of school in Bethesda, Md.. Some fads are regional: At Houston's Memorial Drive Elementary School, ``evil eye necklaces'' -- red or blue eye-shaped pendants on black leather straps -- are all the rage. ``It's supposed to keep away evil,'' says 10-year-old Saran Hughey. In East Coast elementary schools, girls collect and trade key chains that they hang off their backpacks -- the more, and the noisier, the better. At certain schools, it's the brand names that are crucial -- Mica shoes, Mccracken sunglasses, Shook backpacks. Kids split on whether really baggy jeans are cool or not. But they agree on styles that are definitely geeky: T-shirts with smiley faces, oversize shirts, tight jeans and dress-up clothes. Even where schools have adopted uniforms, kids still find ways to express their individual styles. Eleven-year-old Emiko Cary, who wears a uniform to sixth grade at a private school in San Francisco, paints her fingers and toes with green metallic nail polish with names like Greed and Chronic. And testing the limits of tolerance is a time-honored tradition. Emerald and her friends once wore blue lipstick to school. ``But they made us take it off,'' she says. Almost as important as what kids wear is what they bring to school. Backpacks with pockets for pencils, calculators, a built-in lunch cooler, detachable wallet, and its own water bottle are selling well at Wal-Mart Stores. The S`Cool Mate lunchbox by Igloo looks like a little cooler, and its hard plastic sides keep sandwiches from getting squished. Plastic organizers for papers and pencils called ``Trapper Keepers'' are must-haves. ``If they have the wrong Trapper, they're really embarrassed the first day of school,'' says Douglass Routh, the father of two girls, ages eight and 10. The right lunch box, notebook and clothes notwithstanding, some of the hippest styles can't be bought. For seven-year-old Michal Babcock of New York City and her first-grade classmates, the coolest back-to-school look of all is missing front teeth.
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