Mother and toddler sing-along groups can be highly competitive. Not so much
about what notes little Daisy can hit as what designer togs she is wearing.
It’s dog-show time when worn-out mums in well-worn clothes expend what
little energy they have in dressing their kids to impress. I remember taking
my then two-year-old son to one such class buttoned up in a mini Harris
Tweed gentleman’s coat; a vintage piece with a brown velvet collar that had
been carefully laid down in my mother-in-law’s loft. A neat French woman
clutching her exquisitely clad baby made a beeline for us to discover where
she could buy one. On hearing that it was a hand-me-down from my husband,
she grimaced as if a mothball had been shoved under her nose. “Oh,” she
said, clearly bemused. “He must be tiny.”
The boundary between children’s and adults’ clothing is a jagged and often
blurred line. Throughout history, children have been dressed as adults and
vice versa, with periods in between where junior fashions were exclusively
pint-sized. Top to Toe: Fashion for Kids, an exhibition opening today at the
V&A Museum of Childhood, looks at children’s clothing from the past 250
years, highlighting defining trends and showcasing iconic pieces. Liberty
bodices, knitted swimsuits, parkas, ponchos and legwarmers are all there.
The exhibition explores how garments have been revived and reinterpreted,
what makes something cool, and how affordable, mass-produced fashions have
transformed the contents of today’s mini-wardrobes. Children have always
been walking sandwich boards, trotting around in their parents’ aspirations,
but that the exhibition is running at all is testament to our increasing
obsession with how our kids look. Not only do we want them to be seen and
heard, we want them to stand out from the crowd, too.
“Kids’ fashion today is changing quickly,” says Sarah Wood, the exhibition’s
curator. “There are so many must-have items that it’s hard to keep up.” What
struck her the most while putting the collection together was the diminutive
size of the children who once wore the historical pieces: “We had mannequins
especially made.” The detail on hats, gloves and dresses is eye-catching
when you consider that children would have played in these outfits.
Throughout history we have switched between constraining the young and
giving them freedom to move. Until the 18th century, babies were bound in
tight strips of linen; now swaddling is back in vogue, albeit in 100 per
cent organic cotton. The exhibition begins with girls in the 18th century
trussed up in restrictive bodices, with cinched V-waists and layers of
voluminous skirts. During the Regency period, tight-laced corsets were
temporarily abandoned in favour of free-flowing dresses. “It was the Age of
Enlightenment and childhood was seen in a very romantic sense,” says Wood.
“It was celebrated that you could run and play and the clothes reflected
that. These were clothes children could express themselves in. It was a
children’s style before it became fashionable for ladies. This was a period
when children’s fashions led the shape of adults’ clothes.”
Graduating into more grown-up styles is no longer a rite of passage now that
kids and adults share virtually the same wardrobe.These days it’s not
unusual for a layette to include jeans, a leather jacket, a sweatshirt with
a slogan, and a pair of white Nikes. Until the First World War, younger boys
commonly wore dresses, not least because of the practical aspect when it
came to toilet training. From 1790 to 1830 they might have worn a skeleton
suit (a tight-fitting jacket and trousers buttoned at the waist) or the more
elaborate Hussar suits of the early 1800s (jackets fitted to the waist that
flared out to a knee-length skirt over trousers). Fauntleroy suits and
sailor suits arrived in the mid-1800s. Knickerbockers, plus fours, short
shorts, and baggy flannel shorts were all precursors of the school-uniform
version worn today. Breeching, which ran into the early 20th century, marked
the time when a boy of five or six was handed his first pair of trousers. Up
to about 1800, wealthy families would have given their son his first sword.
Nowadays, middle-class boys graduate out of Mini Boden and into Boden, the
difference being the stripes are wider.
Among all the “funky” unisex clothing for kids today, there has been a return
to gender colour coding – blue for a boy and pink for a girl – harking back
to the Twenties and Thirties. It wasn’t always thus; historically, boys were
associated with pink, a tonal variant of red, symbolising power, and girls
with blue, as worn by the Virgin Mary. Maybe it’s easier for manufacturers
to produce a limited, safe palette, or possibly mothers who dress in unisex
styles have found an outlet for their otherwise repressed girlie instincts.
Conservative styles for kids carried on into the Fifties before brightly
coloured rock’n’roll fashions from America began to shake things up.
Full-skirted cotton print dresses with petticoats were all the rage, as were
pedal-pushers teamed with brightly coloured sweaters and pumps.
Washing machines and synthetic fabrics that kept their shape made a huge
difference to the way children were dressed. By the late Fifties, mothers no
longer had to spend their evenings darning sweaters. In the Sixties, adults
and children were wearing dungarees, zip-fronted jerkins, and shifts over
ribbed rollnecks and tights. In the Seventies, boys started updating their
school uniforms with platform shoes and shoulder-length hair. Out of school,
flares, denim and sheepskin were the hot looks, and parents were happily
buying into them on behalf of their children. Denim was big again in the
Eighties, and cool kids wore their Levi’s with Slush Puppie or Pac-Man
T-shirts. These days, mini sweatshirts come with hoods and slogans:
“Chillin’” or “Weapon of Mass Destruction”. Babies can join in the Eighties
revival in ra-ra skirts and leggings sold in their size at Topshop.
One of the most significant changes in children’s clothing of recent years has
been the number of supermarkets and high street stores that have started
selling their own ranges. Children’s clothing is now so cheap that it is not
so much a case of wash-and-wear as wear-and-chuck. At the other end of the
shopping scale, high-end designers such as Chloé, Burberry, Missoni and Marc
Jacobs have been quick to jump on the bandwagon. “This is a growing market
encouraging brand loyalty at a young age,” says Lynne Crook, a buying
manager at Selfridges. “Girls are very fashion-forward from about the age of
six.” She predicts a return to Sixties hippy gear and for the nautical look
to trickle down from womenswear, and for boys, gingham shirts and Seventies
American high-school gear. “Fewer child-specific brands are available,”
Crook says. “It’s about replicating adult brands in a mini version.”
Even before talk of a recession began there were signs of a backlash. “There
is a heightened awareness of where our clothes come from and how long they
are going to last,” says Kay Mawer, who worked in sales and marketing before
relaunching Clothkits in February. A British brand favourite among Seventies
mums who reared their own chickens and ate brown rice, Clothkits was set up
by Anne Kennedy in 1968, bought by Freemans in the Eighties, and made
dormant in 1991. The clothes, which came in good-quality fabric, simple
shapes and bold colours, were sent as patterns, ready to be cut and sewn.
They were heirloom garments in the sense that you might still see small
children today running around in their father’s dungarees. Mawer, 35, is
cashing in on the DIY revolution. “People are interested in doing things for
themselves,” she says.
We will always fall into different tribes when it comes to how we dress our
children. There are those who only want new clothes; others who can’t wait
for the bin bag of hand-me-downs. “It’s all about the parents,” says Wood.
“It’s a reflection of them.” It feels as though we are becoming increasingly
child-centric and weaker when faced with children’s demands. But this is not
an entirely new phenomenon. As early as 1928, Harrods News, a magazine for
account holders, warned: “To please the youth of today is not easy, but even
their ultra-critical taste is satisfied by the excellent tailoring and
general finish of Harrods clothes.” That said, this month the store started
selling the dressing-up box to end them all. With 50 outfits to create, it
should result in a great spectator sport for adults who want to see their
children playing with clothes. The idea is that it offers an antidote to
mind-numbing computer games; a return to old-fashioned simplicity, you might
say. Only the clothes are “couture” and the price tag is £800.
Top to Toe: Fashion for Kids is at the V&A Museum of Childhood, Bethnal
Green, London E2 until April 19. Free admission, open daily (020-8983 5200; www.museumofchildhood.org.uk
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