A user who wants to make their daughter’s cautious wardrobe more fashionable while keeping her fashion choices can use our fashion critic’s advice.
My daughter, who is a fantastic teenager, prefers to wear clothing from thrift stores and mainly wears T-shirts and pants or sweat/lounge jeans. But she is on the verge of adulthood, and sometimes, like special occasions, thrift wo n’t cut it. How can I walk her wardrobe’s needles? — Queenie, Old Saybrook, Conn.
When it comes to what might be called the “fashion gap,” you must first ask yourself whether your pain stems from your child choosing inappropriate clothing, or from your own prejudices and assumptions ( like the technology gap ).
We all have our own sense of “appropriate” when it comes to how we interpret our clothing, which are shaped by the social and cultural prejudices that surround us. Knowledge that is crucial to understanding how your child is dressing is. Your reality is not always your child’s reality. In fact, a more comfortable style of outfitting has become the norm in a post-pandemic world where wearing relaxed everyday clothes and working from home is the norm.
You must first know why your kid is wearing it before you even begin to inquire about it, which means responding with compassion and curiosity rather than judgment and disapproval. Nothing more encourages you to dig in and hold to your raggedy old things than an child telling you that it’s scraggly old thing, as any child who has had screaming matches with her mom about clothes can speak.
For instance, is your daughter thrifting because she is passionate about sustainability and is aware that the single best way to prolong the life of clothing in circulation ( i .e., purchase secondhand ) is to do so?
Is her choice a financial choice because she is actually trying on different identities at a certain point in her life and wo n’t want to invest in one until she is certain it’s right?
Is her attitude social, because she hates the pretentiousness that style brands represent? Is it about blending in with her gaze team? Is it about satisfaction? Is it some mixture of everything above?
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