School Gets Grown Up Cool

The NY Times looks at a trend where kids are ditching the jeans and hoodies for more sophisticated fashion:

A growing number of teenagers plan to ditch their rumpled, randomly mingled T-shirts, cargo pants and jeans this fall for a more thoughtfully orchestrated, if seemingly unstudied, back-to-school wardrobe. Many will be zeroing in on fashions with a frankly mature edge. Tunic tops, Empire dresses, argyle sweaters, mixed prints and skinny jeans — chances are that if they spied those looks on the runways or in the pages of Us Weekly or InStyle, they will be wearing look-alike versions this fall.

Savvier than their predecessors about trends, brand names and quality — and hipper about the image they hope to project — many teenagers are unabashedly style-struck. Accordingly, merchants and trend watchers predict that many teenagers will be investing sums, which previously have gone to electronic gadgets, on wardrobes that are meant to be the envy of their peers.

An intensifying infatuation with Hollywood and runway-inspired designs is pointing them to sophisticated youth-oriented brands like Marc by Marc Jacobs, Paul & Joe for Target, See by Chloé and J. Crew.

An Impressionable Age – New York Times