High style for the stroller set
Are we grooming a new generation of label-obsessed fashionistas? It would seem so. Spring is here, and with it, the must-have tot collections from Armani Junior, Dior Baby, Little Marc (as in Jacobs) are coming down the slide. Designers often outfit celebrities tiny enough to wear children’s sizes, but these days more of them are clothing actual children.
Toddler chic doesn’t come cheap. Armani Junior is selling $175 tracksuits for infants. Stuart Weitzman has infant-sized flats for $65. Chloe’s showing a jumper for the kindergarten set at $188. There are $106 True Religion jeans for 2-year-olds, and 3.1 Phillip Lim shift dresses for preschoolers for a cool $325.
Over the top? Of course. And yet, for kids cruising around the Back Bay in fully-loaded $1,200 Bugaboo strollers, an infant-sized $200 tie-dye dress from Burberry seems, for some affluent parents, rather reasonable.
Sure, the economy’s tough. But shhhh. Don’t tell the children. The high-end kiddie market hit $45 billion in 2006, according to Michael J. Silverstein, author of “Treasure Hunt: Inside the Mind of the New Consumer” and a senior partner with the Boston Consulting Group. “The baby is pretty recession proof,” he wrote in an e-mail. Splurging starts with the crib and stroller and escalates into many other categories. “The mothers tell us they want their kids to get off to the right start.”
Even so, Silverstein said he expects the apparel portion of the upscale children’s industry to soften. But not everyone is abandoning high-end children’s boutiques for JCPenney.
