Honestly, I don’t have any childhood memories that don’t include fabrics, threads, fashion shows, magazines, catalogs, and make-up. My grandmother was a master seamstress and my mom was a Fashion Fair make-up lady, participated in one of their Atlanta fashion shows, and could sew her little hiny off too. At any rate, I racked up tons of frequent-flyer hours in every fabric store in our area and beyond. Since my grandmother worked for Atlanta interior design firms and produced work for the White House (under the Carter Administration), Evander Holifield’s first home, and Elton John’s condo in Atlanta to name a few. I gained the experience of luxury fabrics as she was often given scraps when hobs were done. So, I naturally gained a knack for quality colors, textures, and textiles.
My mom worked at the Rich’s (now Macy’s) Fashion Fair make-up counter, and even participated in a Fashion Fair fashion show once. So I got to enjoy watching her teach her younger sisters how to apply and wear make-up and give them make-overs for their proms and special events. I don’t ever remember not having beautiful clothes, and while they were not big named designers, I always felt special because no one else had the same thing. Because my Mother and Grandmother were so good at what they did, I also learned what quality seamstress work was. And believe me you’ll flip when I break it all down for you in my behind the scenes blog entries on retailers.
Now, add all that to me jumping up at 5 or 6am in the mornings every Saturday to watch Elsa clench’s Style on CNN until the show was taken off the air, and you get moi! A self proclaimed stylist to tween girls the world over. My daughter is now 15, but during her tween years, I developed a knack for dressing growing girls. I essentially would always get complements on her great fashions, and how she always looked great but still age appropriate. I always found myself in conversations in stores and PTA meetings with other moms and giving tips on where to shop and how to make purchases for growing girls that are already built like Amazon Goddesses. The main problem was finding age appropriate clothes that they liked too. I new I was on to something when reading my daughter’s year book signings from friends who told her to keep rock’n her cute clothes!
The original BBC What Not to Wear (WN2W), and the US version of WN2W, Oprah make-overs, and Tim Gunn’s Guide to Style and thinking… hey, I already know most all this stuff. My thought process continued, and I began to think why don’t more women know these things? Well, it’s because we weren’t taught. Believe me, I made many a fashion faux pas along the way too, since not having a lot of guidance once my Mother started to let me choose what I wanted to wear. Further, I knew all to well the how retailers treated grown women who knew nothing about fashion, and tween girls are told any and everything to get them to buy any and everything. So, now I’d found my marketing segment that was desperately under served and in need of some real TLC (not the group ;).
Along with my BA and MBA in business management, my background in retail apparel operations management, ethically showed me how the retail industry has morally chickened out on tween girls by not carrying ONLY age appropriate clothes. The tween marketing segment is a relatively new phenomenon, that is still attempting to get a grasp on what tweens want and what their parents will allow them to have. Thus far, it has been anything goes attitude, and as with everything else in our society, parents are left with one more facet of having to monitor what their girls blindly lead think is just right for them. There are also many petite teens and women shop in tween stores too because it’s less expensive, further exacerbating the problem. I had to endure watching lots of tweens and even little girls at play with the cracks of their little hiny’s poking out, and trust me the plumber show and tell is not a hot look. Or, there is always the more acceptable opposite of being dressed like their still two years old, which many of you remember dreading and young girls yourself. Enter moi… who can piece together great, fresh, generation X, Y, & Z styles that tweens, their peers, parents, and society at large love.
Girls, we moms know you are drowning with poor and overly sexy images in every format of media in existence. As such, you tweens have enough to go through with the pressures of school which encompasses learning more than ever at an earlier age to have a chance in our new globally technological and communications based world. Along with that at 10 to 14 years of age, most will begin your menstruation, breast development, and a host of other physically, psychologically, and emotionally developmental beginnings. Combine this with family, extra curricular activities, friends, and boys; clothing should be the least of your worries. And mothers the last thing our tweens should be worried about is looking and feeling great everyday, and that’s my goal… to help them do just that.
