Two years ago, on April Fool’s Day, the menswear edition of Style.com published an article about a hot new design prodigy named Damian Finch, who had wowed the fashion world by showing a full collection at the ripe young age of 12.
“It’s like, I can’t do much about my age,” Finch was quoted as saying. “I just like to make cool clothes. And if you use the word ‘tween,’ I’m going to puke.”
This was right around the time that real-life prodigies like Tavi Gevinson, a 12-year-old fashion blogger; David Fishman, a 12-year-old food critic; and Jonathan Krohn, a 14-year-old conservative pundit, were being discovered and celebrated, so it was perhaps less surprising than it should have been that a lot of readers took the report at face value and demanded to know where they could buy Finch’s clothes.
It was a spoof.
“We got requests from many publications, mostly foreign magazines, asking for Damian,” said Dirk Standen, the editor in chief of Style.com, a slight degree of remorse detectable in his tone. The boy photographed for the story was actually his own son, 12 years old at the time, posing in a ribbed knit cap, a white oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbows, a natty charcoal vest and skinny jeans.
As a parent, Standen said, he had conflicting feelings about children who are obsessed with fashion and, inspired by teenage celebrities and empowered by the Internet, are starting what could be called their careers at such an early age, especially in the fashion industry. But in a case of truth that is stranger than fiction, in the time since his parody appeared, at least half a dozen actual teenagers and tweens have started their own collections, some of them as young as 10.
One of the most successful, Cecilia Cassini, an 11-year-old from Encino, Calif., is marketed on her e-commerce site as the “world’s youngest fashion designer” and a “kiddie couturier.” Her trademark is a large silk bow she often wears in her hair or attaches to the front of a party frock. She has appeared on the Today show, making a custom dress for Jenna Bush Hager, and, according to her father, has sold close to 500 designs since she started her business, back when she was 10. One of her inspirations is Lourdes Leon, the 14-year-old daughter of Madonna, who helps design Material Girl, the singer’s juniors collection sold at Macy’s.
Eighth-grade entrepreneur Madison Waldrop shares sketches of her design concepts that are developed by her rendering artist, Lenka Marfoldy
“Look at how many famous teens there are now,” Cecilia said in a phone interview. “Fashion is a hot thing to be into when you’re young.”
“Kiddie couturiers” are perhaps the ultimate, inevitable result of a fashion culture that is obsessed with youth (Prada, Valentino and Rodarte are now dressing young stars like Hailee Steinfeld and Elle Fanning in runway fashions) and a youth culture that is obsessed with fashion (see: Polyvore, Second Life, Project Runway). But the fact that fashion has become a field that is so easy for a tween to crack says a lot about how much the perception of a designer has changed. The allure of fashion is no longer the craft, but the flash.
“It is interesting social commentary, more than anything,” said Michael Fink, the dean of the school of fashion design at Savannah College of Art and Design. “The fact that you can design your own line on almost any fashion website means there is very little mystery out there at any age as to how an industry works today. It’s overly accessible.”
Often, with incoming freshmen, he said, “we now have to kindly erase the notion of what fashion is from their minds.” While there is far more information available to them online, and more of an understanding of the glamorous side of the business, many of their impressions are based on what they see on styling shows or at their local malls.
“That’s the thing about these tween designers,” Fink said. “Where is the celebration of the art and the craft? Where is the historical knowledge?”
Questions also arise about exposing children to public scrutiny, and there are further worries that some of them are being manipulated for the novelty of their age. Cecilia Cassini was originally managed by Pilar DeMann, who has also promoted the Kardashians (Cecilia’s parents have since discontinued that relationship), and many of the teenage bloggers have been courted by designers for promotional purposes. It seems hard for anyone to be able to say no.
“I’m not sure it’s up to us to say whether this is healthy or unhealthy,” said Standen of Style.com. “If you take Tavi as an example of a writer and a blogger, she really loves this stuff and she is really knowledgeable about it, so you think, Why shouldn’t she be doing it?”
Then, too, there is a new generation of designers who began introducing collections right out of college —fashion stars like Alexander Wang, Jason Wu, and Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez of Proenza Schouler. Their overnight successes inspired other designers to follow suit, at ever earlier ages, like Esteban Cortazar, when he was 14, and Pedro Lourenco, a Brazilian who showed at Paris Fashion Week when he was 19.
“I would tell people they shouldn’t wait until they’re 20 to be in fashion,” Cecilia said. “Even if you’re 5, you can still do it.”
Last week, as hundreds of established fashion designers were presenting their fall collections in New York, Madison Waldrop, 13, was just getting started on hers. She shopped for fabrics along the side streets of the garment district, while her parents, who breed champion toy poodles, attended the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. Madison, a fashion newbie from Chattanooga, Tenn., is developing a dress collection called Designs by Malyse, specializing in evening and bridal gowns. She hopes to introduce a full line to buyers in October, at the WeddingChannel Couture Show. The fact that she is still in the eighth grade is not likely to stop her.
“This is something that I truly love to do,” Madison said. “For me, it’s not just about designing that cutesy dress; it’s the whole process of actually making clothes that I love.”
Last March, while waiting for a flight, she had started doodling a sketch, and, encouraged by her mother, Christine Waldrop, she decided this is what she really wanted to do as a career. Her parents—her father, Mark Waldrop, is a chief operating officer for a health care company in Georgia—helped her establish a business, contract local seamstresses, create a website and hire a publicist. Her first dress was a silver halter mini in Dupioni silk, with a large rosette of orange and blue petals at the neckline. Her least expensive dresses will cost around $500, she said.
“I like making my own trends, and very confident bold pieces,” she said.
Madison’s mother, when asked if she thought it was a good idea for her daughter to start a business at 13, said that Madison is very focused, mature and grounded, and that designing clothes is a way for her to express herself creatively.
“We have had conversations about it, that this can take you in two directions, and, like anything in life, you have to choose which path you are going to take,” Christine Waldrop said.
Lionel Cassini, Cecilia’s father, defended the promotion of his daughter. He is a photographer and his wife, Michelle, is a yoga instructor.
“I’m happy that she has something that she loves to do, and she’s not on a video game or in front of the television all day,” Cassini said. “Some people, they take their kids to baseball practice three times a week. Our daughter loves to sew.”
At the age of 5, Cecilia began to show an interest in clothes and asked for a sewing machine for her sixth birthday. She taught herself to make cute little dresses in clashing colors, sewing a fuchsia or leopard-print silk skirt to a sequined tube top. Before long, she was invited to have trunk shows at local boutiques—Tough Cookies in Sherman Oaks, and Fred Segal in Santa Monica—where she sold designs costing about $78 to $143.
Still, Cecilia and other child designers have been the subjects of vicious online commentary. This happened to Megan Kent, 11, of Vero Beach, Fla., soon after she was interviewed by GirlsLife.com about starting a T-shirt line. Some readers called her spoiled, or worse, and a few classmates derided her designs. Her mother, Tricia Kent, who owns a company called Public Relation Divas, said that she would not allow Megan to read the comments but that the episode was a lesson to her that she would need to be more vigilant.
“The postings were just horrendous,” Kent said. “It’s really sad, and I know it is based on jealousy. Not everybody has the means to pursue their dreams at an early age. We’re not in a high income class. However, from what I do for a living and my contacts, I am able to give her this.”
Megan came up with the idea and name for the line, called Love Gone, when her parents were going through a difficult divorce last year. Tricia Kent said she encouraged her daughter because she felt it was a means of empowerment. This week, they will participate in an Oscars gifting suite in West Hollywood, Calif., hoping to give T-shirts to celebrities who might promote them.
“Megan says she wants to take it as big as Ed Hardy, but not as tacky,” Tricia Kent said.
Several of these collections include a charity component. Cecilia Cassini donates a portion of proceeds to the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, and the Waldrop family is establishing a foundation to benefit children’s charities. Megan’s mother said she is looking to link Love Gone with a charity—something she said would help cast the venture in a friendlier light.
Jane Keltner de Valle, the fashion news director of Teen Vogue, views it as a positive sign that teenagers are taking advantage of online resources to get an early start in their careers.
“This is the Now Generation,” she said. “To see that drive and follow-through and resourcefulness is really great at that young age, but I don’t think the Proenza Schoulers of the world, or Marc Jacobs, need to worry about these kids.”
Maybe in a few years. Last fall, Grant Mower, a cherubic 12-year-old from Flower Mound, Texas, won a design contest at Terry Costa, a Dallas retailer, with a simple and elegant one-shouldered white gown. He was 11 at the time, but he had begun making sketches years before that and realized they were fashion after watching an episode of Project Runway, said Moanna Mower, his mother. Creative and artistic, he was having problems at school, teased and bullied when he told his friends he wanted to be a fashion designer.
“He was broken,” Moanna Mower said. “It was really rough. When he came home from school, it would take hours to coax him out of his mood.” Out of desperation, she said, “I would do things like ask, ‘Want to watch a Versace show?”’
Fashion gave Grant the validation he was looking for, she said. A proficient sewer with her own interior design business, Mower became his seamstress, making ever more elaborate designs, with fabric cut on the bias, a built-in bra, 16 panels of chiffon, ruching just the way he liked it. As word of his talent spread on the local NBC affiliate and this month on The Nate Berkus Show, Mower said she realized Grant’s understanding of fashion went well beyond his years. After she described his special talent, she handed the phone to her son.
“I really want to be a haute couturier, like Valentino Garavani or Karl Lagerfeld,” he said. “Their fashion is what really reads as smart, beautiful and classic. I’m in love with it. I can’t really think of doing anything else with my life.”
source: manila bulletin
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