Despite the fact that it has created many tendencies and has evolved continuously in conformity with the society’s ideals and needs, fashion has only recently begun to pay equal attention to all categories of age. Although they were generally neglected in the past by clothing manufacturers, children nowadays form an important segment of clients in the fashion industry, enjoying an extensive and varied range of clothing appropriate for their age. The children’s clothing industry has only recently begun to achieve a good exposure and popularity, gaining a lot of ground over the past few years.

As the children’s clothing industry was growing in popularity, more and more fashion designers decided to focus their work exclusively on designing clothes for young children and babies. Soon, the offer became more and more diversified, children’s clothes gaining a lot in aspect and originality. Supermarkets and clothing stores began to fill up with ingenious and colorful clothing articles for children, lots of shops even specializing in exclusively selling children’s clothes. In contrast to yesterday’s children’s clothes – poorly designed and, let’s face it, quite dull – today’s children’s clothes are ingenious and appealing, stimulating their imagination and building their sense of aesthetics and beauty. Ranging from little boys’ suits and little girls’ accessorized dresses to cartoon-character costumes and even superhero outfits, children’s clothes are nowadays created to adequately satisfy the needs and desires of the very young.

Visibly enjoying “the attention” granted to them by the fashion industry, lots of children nowadays spend more and more time looking for the most interesting and imaginative clothing items they can find. Mesmerized by so many clothing models, designs and colors, many children can hardly decide upon a single item in particular! As soon as they step inside children’s clothing stores, children are immersed in a colorful and magnificent world, similar to the world created by toy stores. Funnily, lots of today’s children equally enjoy paying visits to both children’s clothing stores and toy stores – fact that reveals the young generations’ interest towards clothes, and thus their inclination towards originality, aesthetics and sense of beauty.

Seen through the perspective of their prices in general, children’s clothes have lately become increasingly more affordable. While a few years ago parents had to spend a small fortune to offer their children good-quality articles of clothing, nowadays they can buy appropriate clothes for considerably smaller sums of money. Several major factors that have led to the reduction of children’s clothing prices are: substantial clothes imports, the appearance of many discount-shops on the market and the equal distribution of the merchandise between supermarkets and clothing stores.

Online stores have also had a great contribution to the depreciation of children’s clothing prices, offering customers high-quality yet cheaper clothing articles. Children’s clothing online stores have become very popular, as they provide customers with cost-effective alternatives to similar, shop-purchased products. Online stores offer clients the possibility to choose among hundreds of different clothing items such as boys’ suits, boys’ shirts and trousers, girls’ dresses, girls’ trousers, girls’ capes, unisex clothing items, as well as various accessories such as ties, bows, shoes and booties – all categorized according to size and age. Apart from having affordable prices and an extensive offer, children’s clothing online stores also allow customers to purchase their desired products online, thus helping them save time and effort.

So what was it that changed my mind? I believe the answer lies in the hands of, well, a handful of people called ‘Trend Analysts’ AKA The Fashion Police. Their job: to serve and protect the commercial interests of fashion companies across the globe. How? By dissecting the public’s psychology of what will be the next trend will be by way of extensive travel and shopping expeditions (those bastards). These ‘trend analysts’ then report back to analysis companies, who then go on to consolidate their findings in industry magazines and websites for the use of fashion companies.

I’d like to say that fashion companies use analysis companies because they’re lazy, but it’s certainly not the case. They’re just scared to make a mistake (can you imagine manufacturing 1000 pairs of high waisted skinny leg jeans only to find that everyone was going for low rise bootleg? Ebay auctioning them is NOT a solution here). There are also unbelievable time constraints between the seasons. So most designers design their range around what they are fed, and if they’re lucky they get to travel around Europe and Japan to buy garments to ‘take inspiration from’. This is why we get a slight variation of the trend theme every season; all our designers are shopping in the same store in London! If you want to see something really interesting, just observe the women with suitcases in major department stores buying size ten (when they are size 12) at the start of every season. Ask them what they do for a living.

Can you see we are at the hands of a conspiracy!? We need to take action. I urge you to burn your pleather Fendi bags! Let’s make up our own trends! I myself am going to knit and extended version of the merkin (If you don’t know what one is, I advise you Google it because I’m certainly not about to explain). Yep, it’s going to be a toasty winter for me rugged up in my black merkin cardigan…

Which brings me back to my original thought at the beginning of this piece (merkins also have the power to bring people back to what they were originally thinking). What was it that made me buy those pointy toe high heels I now so dearly cherish? I believe it comes down to one word: agreement. Agreement by trend analysts, agreement by industry magazines, agreement by designers, agreement in fashion magazines, agreement throughout the stores, and finally, agreement by you. Agreement creates our fashion reality. Not always bad, but within the safety of agreement comes a lack of innovation. And that’s why we need those quirky fashion revolutionaries; so we can steel their ideas, manufacture them times a million, and sell the homogenized version back to you. Back to square one. We again enter into a state of agreement. Weird world we’re living in ain’t it? Now where did I put my knitting needles and my merkin ‘wool’ supply..?