The Latest in Kids Fashion??

I was just watching NBC Today's show and they had a segment on children's fashion today. They featured a little girl wearing a rainbow striped sweater, plaid pleated skirt, brown and pink polka dot leggings and black military style boots. And for some reason the host stated that if parents came dressed like this we would look like we just got out of bed, but for kids it works. Um...I hate to tell you this but NO it doesn't! Who in their right mind would dress their kids like this? It looks like they dressed themselves in the morning and walked out that way. Or that dad dressed them. Just teasing dads!

It gets me to thinking: how often do we look up to designers telling us what is hot for the season? If you haven't noticed, most items fit for the runway are not fit for regular every day people like you and me. They are designed for a particular body style and will only compliment that style and no other.

I leave it up to the every day moms and dads out there to decide what fashion truly is. If no one buys it, then who cares who designed it?

Have you ever walked by a display and all the manequins in the window were layered in what seems to be every item of clothing in the store? And yet, no one ever actually wears the clothing that way? It may be a little known secret that visual merchandisers responsible for the displays in stores layer things to show options and to fit as many items as possible onto one manequin so you can see a larger variety of clothing. However, since real people don't dress that way, it doesn't always work effectively.

There's a story my parents tell that when I was young (about 6 perhaps) I asked if I could do the displays in their store window (my parents owned a retail store in Oklahoma City, OK). I could use whatever I wanted. So, I went about looking for items to dress the display manequins and what I chose were every day items that you would wear by themself, not layered. You can imagine how shocked my parents were when they sold out of those items that same week! Another time, I was an assistant manager at a clothing store in Plano, TX and at one point we didn't have a visual merchandiser to do the displays so I took it upon myself to change them. I used actual matching pieces and accessories, clothing that you could easily see putting together as an outfit and walking out of the store looking great. Perhaps I'm crazy like that, but those particular items were the first to sell in the store. So much so that I had to constantly change our displays because we would sell the outfits right off of the manequins!

And then the corporate office hired a VM and it went back to layers and layers and less and less sales. Sadly, that company soon went out of business. Turns out, not everyone appreciates paying cheaper prices for something that falls apart after one wash. Myself included. But hey, it was a job and a stepping stone for my Neiman Marcus experience.

I guess fashion has always been in my blood, and I know what I like when I see it. That's my hope for the boutique as well, that I can offer the best in children's fashion without sacrificing quality. I won't sell anything that I don't think fits with my goals for the boutique.

And you won't find pictures on the boutique of kids wearing multiple layers. ;)

Dreaming up new ideas daily,