by lesley jane seymour
the new york times
april 22, 2007
it is 11:15 a.m. the kids have the day off from school and i'm mall crawling the westchester in white plains, with my posse: my 11-year-old daughter, lake, and two of her friends, annabelle kirk, 11, and eve wulf, 12.
they are identically (though they would say individually) decked out in the suburban tween girl uniform, almost head-to-toe abercrombie: skin-tight jeans and layered t-shirts, as well as ballet flats, uggs, or michael kors boots. eve wears a juicy couture bracelet with a $60 charm that her mother bought for her for valentine's day, which the others fawn over longingly.
shortly after we enter the mall, my perfectly coiffed and lip-glossed group of girls step into louis vuitton and gaze at a white mink stole covered with colorful logos in a plastic case. "i have to have this!" exclaims lake.
"that will take your babysitting money," replies a surprisingly playful saleswoman, "for-ever!"
"oh!" lake says. "i didn't know it was real!"
back in the main hall, the girls spot a man carrying two giant pink juicy couture bags, and they start hissing like snakes, cheering, "ju-i-ccc-y! ju-i-ccc-y!" as if the brand was their favorite member of the mamaroneck high school football team.
when we pull up in front of abercrombie, the preteen version of abercrombie & fitch, silence falls over my crowd. with its cloying overspritzed air, loud thumping music, blowup posters of young girls and boys, this is ground zero for tween fashion worship: collared shirts in sorbet colors, tanks so thin they often come with holes already in them and skin-tight jeans that curvier teenagers can't squeeze into.
it's a place where i have been held hostage so often that i have coined a name for that vacant look of resignation women get when setting foot inside the store: dead mom walking.
but on this day i've come not to bury abercrombie. i am here to observe my daughter and her two friends make their way around a suburban mall to help me understand why shopping seems to have become an acceptable hobby, even an obsession, among some young girls. and to see how stores like abercrombie and american eagle outfitters, as well as luxury brands, successfully court these young girls and turn them into customers.
after 28 years in the fashion business, the last four running marie claire magazine, i am well acquainted with the pleasures of shopping and how the fashion industry is always trying to focus on new audiences. what was surprising about watching these girls move around the mall was their depth of knowledge of even the most sophisticated brands and their brand loyalty.
for them, going to the mall is no longer about looking. the concept of window shopping no longer exists. going home without a bag is unthinkable. shopping has become about buying.
"the idea of recreational shopping is not new," said juliet b. schor, a professor of sociology at boston college and author of "born to buy: the commercialized child and the new consumer culture" (scribner). "think back on stereotypes of women of leisure at the turn of the century who spent all their time shopping."
what is new, she said, "is there is less of a cultural taboo on materialism."
ms. schor said this increase in materialistic values has been reflected in several recent studies, including a pew research center poll of adults 18 to 25 in 2006 that found a majority of those surveyed said that "getting rich" was their main goal.
combine this new emphasis on consumerism with the influence of celebrities, like paris hilton, and you can see where the younger set is getting its notions of fashion, style and culture. there is also tv, with its fashion shows aimed at younger viewers, from "america's next top model" to "project runway."
and there are the celebrity magazines, which count young girls as a significant chunk of their readership.
"we know these readers love to see what celebs are wearing on their arms, carrying on their backs and shopping for," said bonnie fuller, editorial director for american media, which owns star magazine, one of the weeklies that has helped raise the image of celebrity shopping to iconic status. "they see them as fashion role models, no question."
and it's not just tweens who have become fashion obsessed. "they're reflecting adult women who are more interested in fashion and logos than when we grew up," ms. fuller said. "american society was not as style- and fashion-oriented 30 years ago."
several luxury brands and retail apparel companies, like abercrombie & fitch, began singling out tweens about a decade ago.
originally a clothing manufacturer's term to describe adolescents who have outgrown children's styles, but could not yet wear teenage looks (remember the old "preteen"?), a tween is described variously as ages 8 to 15, 9 to 12 or 8 to 12.
it also describes perfectly the way my posse ricochets between childlike abandon and adult composure — by the minute. as we walked past the brookstone store, they threw themselves onto the massage chairs and jumped up and down, just like children. they are caught between two worlds and that is perhaps why stores like the limited too, which my group no longer considers "cool," carry such a schizophrenic mix of bubblegum and bras.
the reason behind the intense focus on tweens and teens is their phenomenal purchasing power.
"the teen market has exploded in terms of size and direct spending power," said michael wood, vice president of teenage research unlimited, who estimated that today's teenage population stood at 33.5 million. "the fastest growing power is the younger market, 12 to 15, accounting for 50 percent of the overall teen market."
mr. wood said that stores like abercrombie, with its walls plastered with photos of all-american girls and boys who do not seem to have a care in the world, offer a safe haven, a kind of new american backyard.
"being a kid today is really tough," said mr. wood, pointing out that this generation of children is growing up with security detectors at their schools. "in a world of worry, what a breath of fresh air."
while my daughter and two friends tried on their skinny jeans and t-shirts in abercrombie's fitting rooms, i chatted with another mother, sally conrad, from katonah, n.y. she was shopping with her daughter julia, 13, and i asked her why abercrombie was their favorite store.
"it's not really about clothes," ms. conrad said. "at this age it's important for them to feel like they're part of a larger club. and this does it."
daniel t. cook, an associate professor of advertising at the university of illinois, said that clothes shopping gives tweens a safe place in which to do some of the heavy lifting of adolescence.
"they get to select and survey a world of identities and selves that are presented out there," he said. "it almost has a sense of ritualistic or magical timeout."
for that reason, stores catering to this age group, in particular, have pulsating lights and kaleidoscopic colors. "they're designed to evoke fantasy," he said.
they are also designed to grab the billions of dollars that tweens independently spend and have sway over. according to 360 youth, an advertising and marketing company that focuses on young people, tweens independently spend $51 billion annually and have "considerable sway" over another $170 billion annually spent on them by parents and family.
that "sway" is what made even more marketers interested. wendy liebmann, president and founder of wsl strategic retail, has studied consumer behavior in retail stores for 17 years for her how america shops survey.
two years ago, she said, she began noticing a change in young consumers. "you'd see parents saying to very young children, 'what flavor toothpaste do you want?' " she said.
in 2005, ms. liebmann quantified that impact and was "astounded" to find that parents said 75 percent of their children under 13 had some say — always or occasionally — on the purchases of home décor for their own room. forty percent had some say in the skin care products they used, 45 percent on hair care products, 65 percent on sneakers and 58 percent on jeans.
"and you say to yourself, 'o.k., this is what parents are admitting!' " ms. liebmann said, laughing. "it's not surprising that by the time this child is 12 they feel they have every right to make decisions and think they have a legitimate opinion that should be paid attention to."
the sociological move away from authoritarian parents to parents-as-friends has given rise to a generation of children that was born to shop. the result?
"we have this incredibly sophisticated, thoughtful, opinionated consumer," ms. liebmann said. "and parents have created it."
out of necessity, those time-pressed parents also began to integrate shopping into their lives. "they got into the minivan with the family and said, 'we're off to best buy or target' or other places," ms. liebmann said. the idea of a store "as a meeting place became part of the vernacular," she said. struggling malls began to offer food, ice-skating and spas to entice consumers to linger longer, and the separation between shopping and entertainment began to blur.
sharon zukin, a sociology professor at brooklyn college and author of "point of purchase" (routledge), does not deride tweens for wanting to shop because she claims it is the modern form of hunting and gathering.
"how many people bake their own bread, sew their own clothes?" she asked. "we're not self-sufficient any more. you have to buy things today. in a way, learning how to shop is crucial today for how to survive."
mother-daughter shopping can be a bonding experience. "in a traditional society you would have spent the whole day gathering food supplies and cooked tortillas together," ms. zukin said. "but we don't do that."
it can even be an important steppingstone toward adult independence. while interviewing people for her book, ms. zukin asked people whether they remembered their first shopping experience. "they all did," she said. "shopping on your own is a rite of passage."
here are some highlights and tween girl insights from the article.
*originally a clothing manufacturer's term to describe adolescents who have outgrown children's styles, but could not yet wear teenage looks, a tween is described variously as ages 8 to 15, 9 to 12 or 8 to 12.
*tweens independently spend $51 billion annually and have considerable sway over another $170 billion annually spent on them by parents and family.
*shopping seems to have become an acceptable hobby, even an obsession, among some tweens.
*parents said 75 percent of their children under 13 had some say—always or occasionally—on the purchases of home décor for their own room. 40 percent had some say in the skin care products they used, 45 percent on hair care products, 65 percent on sneakers and 58 percent on jeans.
*the suburban tween uniform is skin-tight jeans and layered t-shirts with ballet flats, uggs or michael kors boots.
*tweens ricochet between childlike abandon and adult composure—by the minute. they are caught between two worlds.
*abercrombie, the preteen version of abercrombie & fitch, is ground zero for tween fashion worship.
*clothes shopping gives tweens a safe place in which to do some of the heavy lifting of adolescence. they get to select and survey a world of identities and selves that are presented. it almost has a sense of ritualistic or magical timeout.
*stores catering to tweens have pulsating lights and kaleidoscopic colors to evoke fantasy.
*the sociological move away from authoritarian parents to parents-as-friends has given rise to a generation of children that was born to shop.
