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The Disappearance of Tween Fashion [Archive Pull] · Never Post

• 0:02
  Georgia Hampton: Hey, everybody. It's producer Georgia. This
• 0:05
  week, we're bringing you an archive pull from the Never Post
• 0:08
  Vault, and we're pulling my first ever segment from the
• 0:13
  first ever episode of the show. In it, I talked to professor
• 0:17
  Elizabeth Wissinger about how the rise of algorithmic online
• 0:20
  social platforms helped erase an entire demographic Fashion for
• 0:28
  Girls, upheld by brands such as Limited Too and Delia's. Now,
• 0:33
  girls aged nine to 12 don't have a style curated specifically for
• 0:38
  them.
• 0:39
  Instead, they dress like their moms. When I first wrote this
• 0:44
  segment two years ago, micro trends and aesthetics were at
• 0:48
  their zenith. The latest styles cannibalized each other in a
• 0:52
  matter of weeks, and they had nothing to do with how old you
• 0:55
  were. If you wanted to dress like an office siren, a mob
• 0:59
  wife, or anything that could have core attached to the end of
• 1:03
  it, you could find a mood board that would get you there. But
• 1:06
  now micro trends have kind of gone out of style.
• 1:11
  I don't see the videos I used to see, where once a month, someone
• 1:14
  would proudly declare that a new trend was on the horizon. In
• 1:18
  some ways, we've moved back to the more old school forms of
• 1:22
  trend predicting, where individual types of clothing or
• 1:26
  accessories are pointed to as the next big thing. Every year
• 1:30
  has an it shoe or an it bag. Now, more than anything, the
• 1:35
  sign of good style has more to do with how many hours you're
• 1:38
  willing to spend at the thrift or scrolling through Depop. But
• 1:43
  on Depop, someone my age, 32, is much more likely to try to buy a
• 1:49
  pair of now vintage shoes from Delia's than anyone else.
• 1:54
  So has this shift away from the carousel of trends made space
• 1:59
  for the tween girl demographic to begin again? Not really. The
• 2:05
  closest thing to a tween centered style I've seen lately
• 2:08
  isn't even being worn by real kids. It's being sported by
• 2:13
  American Girl Dolls. This year, to mark the fortieth anniversary
• 2:18
  of the brand, American Girl debuted a modern era version of
• 2:22
  their original six historical dolls.
• 2:25
  These girls have ditched their petticoats and nineteenth
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  century lace up shoes for polka dot dresses and white sneakers.
• 2:31
  Sneakers. My favorite doll, Josefina, whose story originally
• 2:35
  took place in 1824, no longer wears her signature shawl and
• 2:40
  big red skirt. Now, she wears a white button down, a red
• 2:45
  miniskirt, and little white cowboy boots with flowers on
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  them. She has a tiny leather shoulder bag.
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  And in another fashion landscape, these dolls could be
• 2:56
  a great representation of what Tween fashion looks like,
• 2:59
  if it still existed.
• 3:01
  But instead, modern day Josefina just kind of looks like she's
• 3:04
  wearing a costume. And while young girls might reach for her,
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  tweens aren't really playing with dolls. They're online. Even
• 3:14
  after the empire of cottagecore rose and fell, the social
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  internet still has the last say about how fashion trends spread
• 3:22
  to the masses. And tween fashion as a demographic shows no sign
• 3:28
  of returning.
• 3:36
  Kevin: Okay. Alright. So I'm just gonna ask you about what
• 3:39
  you were talking about the other night. So tell me about that,
• 3:43
  about how some of the kids at your school dressed.
• 3:45
  Speaker 4: Okay. A lot of the girls in my grade dress just
• 3:50
  like their moms is what I found. They all dress like, I don't
• 3:57
  mean this as an insult. If I could live this life, I would,
• 4:00
  but, kinda like a stay at home mom who runs errands all day and
• 4:07
  goes to the gym whenever she can because both the girls at my
• 4:13
  school and their moms always wear Lululemon.
• 4:17
  Georgia Hampton: That's a conversation between a friend of
• 4:20
  the show, Kevin, and his daughter, who's 13 years old.
• 4:23
  And what she's talking about here is this strange thing that
• 4:28
  seems to be happening.
• 4:30
  Speaker 4: It's like sometimes I'll, like, see an older woman
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  from behind and I'll be like, is that like so and so from my
• 4:39
  school? No. That is somebody that could be their mom.
• 4:44
  Georgia Hampton: That just feels so weird to me. And listen, I'm
• 4:49
  30 years old. This is a world I'm not a part of anymore. But
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  when I was 13, it would have been mortifying to dress like
• 4:58
  your mom. It would also be extremely bizarre.
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  I'm imagining myself arriving at school in a pair of black
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  stretchy capris with a loose knit leopard print sweater and
• 5:11
  perhaps a decorative beaded necklace, like just showing up
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  to eighth grade history class in h to t Chico's, it's
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  unimaginable. When I was in that nine to twelve tween age bracket
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  back in the mid two thousands, I had my own ecosystem of fashion
• 5:31
  that felt like it was made specifically for me, and that's
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  because it was. Limited Too, Claire's, Justice, Libby Lou, a
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  whole suite of brands whose thing was making clothes and
• 5:45
  accessories for young girls like me, or frankly, making an entire
• 5:49
  space for young girls. And over the last ten years or so, pretty
• 5:54
  much all of those places disappeared. And I wondered if
• 5:58
  that had anything to do with what I and Kevin's daughter have
• 6:01
  noticed happening.
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  Georgia Hampton: I wanna paint you a picture. The inside of a
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  limited two was this color coded, candy scented, fantasy
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  world for girls. Everything was blue and green or pink and
• 6:17
  orange. The store had a huge light up pink daisy on the
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  ceiling and the carpet was this super bright barney shade of
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  purple. Over by the register, you could buy push pops or baby
• 6:30
  bottle pops or bubble tape.
• 6:32
  Famously, you could get your ears pierced, which I did. And
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  limited to was just one of a bunch of places that looked like
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  this. Growing up, there was even a tween home goods store called
• 6:45
  Dry Ice at the mall near me, available for all my beaded
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  curtain, lava lamp, blow up pink lounge chair needs. That's what
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  made all these brands different. They created a tween look, a
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  tween demographic.
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  Everything there was funky without being offensive or cool
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  in the eyes of an 11 year old, but not like dangerously cool.
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  This wasn't Hot Topic or God forbid Spencer's gifts. Nothing
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  at limited two would get you sent to the principal's office.
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  It was p g rated fashion. But now obviously, things are very
• 7:23
  different.
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  Limited two left the mall in 2010. Libby Lou declared
• 7:28
  bankruptcy, then Claire's, then Justice. And that was it. No
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  other stores stepped in to take the daisy clad hot pink plastic
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  blow up throne of tween fashion. Like I said, I'm not a tween.
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  But even I noticed this. And a lot of other people did too,
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  especially on TikTok.
• 7:51
  Speaker 5: The 10 year olds have nowhere to go. They know where
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  to go.
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  Speaker 6: There seems to no longer be a market for
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  specifically preteen and teenage gals. Everybody keeps talking
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  about how it's 10 and 12 year olds in Sephora and Ulta, but
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  they're not talking about how there's no tween stage of life
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  anymore. Once you turn, like, 10, 11, 12, you start jumping
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  and doing stuff like you do, like, at 17, 18 because there's
• 8:11
  no gap in between because everybody forgot about the fact
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  that kids are children even as teenagers. Nowhere to go.
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  Georgia Hampton: What this tells me is that when it comes to
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  fashion, the tween demographic isn't really important to brands
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  anymore. So what is?
• 8:30
  Elizabeth Wissinger: My name is professor Elizabeth Wissinger. I
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  am a professor of sociology at the CUNY Community College of
• 8:38
  Borough Manhattan Community College, BMCC. I am a professor
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  of liberal studies with a concentration in fashion studies
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  at the CUNY Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
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  And I am really interested in how technologies and bodies
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  interact in ways that affect society over time.
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  Georgia Hampton: I talked with professor Wissinger to
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  understand what had taken the place of the quote, unquote,
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  Tween brand. And perhaps unsurprisingly, there's a lot
• 9:08
  going on here, and there's a lot of factors at play. But
• 9:12
  according to professor Wissinger, it all starts with
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  the rise of the social Internet. Before we had Twitter and TikTok
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  and Instagram, changes in fashion were dictated by a very
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  small, very specific set of gatekeepers.
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  Elizabeth Wissinger: You had to be an editor at a fashion
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  magazine, or you had to be somebody photographed in a
• 9:34
  street style blog. And prior to blogs, you had to be a fashion
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  model or somebody who was going to the shows who might be
• 9:40
  photographed outside the tents or or a socialite.
• 9:44
  Georgia Hampton: This meant that the pool of people making
• 9:47
  decisions was small. And then with the social Internet, that
• 9:51
  power started to shift. You weren't only looking at
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  magazines, you were looking at people online, on Instagram or
• 9:59
  YouTube or more recently TikTok, especially TikTok.
• 10:04
  Elizabeth Wissinger: Get ready with me for my Barbie shoot.
• 10:07
  Speaker 4: Get ready with me for picture day.
• 10:08
  Speaker 5: Welcome to a day in my life as a full time content
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  creator. I woke up this morning and got ready just threw on a
• 10:14
  cute little tracksuit, made my bed.
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  Speaker 4: What to wear when you don't know
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  Elizabeth Wissinger: what to wear. So first, we need
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  concealer. The opportunity to create an online presence for
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  yourself, market yourself, become a brand in and of
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  yourself became an option. But brands always have associations.
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  They don't have any meaning unless they're connected to
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  other brands out there in the brand universe.
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  So when you're doing self branding, you are using the
• 10:41
  tools of branding to present a persona that will gain you
• 10:45
  notoriety or fame or acclaim.
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  Georgia Hampton: So if you have a phone and an Internet
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  connection, you could, in theory, start establishing
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  yourself as a tastemaker. Someone to be taken seriously, a
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  person with special and unique ideas about fashion. You can
• 11:01
  build your own little island around yourself as a voice worth
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  listening to. You can do it. Anyone can do it.
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  Everyone can do it. But that comes with its own problem.
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  Elizabeth Wissinger: A lot of individual voices create kind of
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  like a cacophony that ends up sort of blending into just one
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  loud sound, and it so flattens out the individual inflection of
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  individualized personalities in terms of how the public
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  interprets them.
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  Georgia Hampton: It's this shaving down of nuance. Everyone
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  is an individual online, but because everyone is unique, no
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  one is. It's a weird tension between wanting to be special
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  and different, but also attractive to a lot of people.
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  Elizabeth Wissinger: It's like you wanna appeal to the masses
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  with your individuality, which has been the conundrum of being
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  fashionable since the beginning of fashion. But now it's, like,
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  on steroids with the fact that everyone can be a fashion
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  influencer if they use these tools.
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  Georgia Hampton: What matters here is bridging that gap
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  between uniqueness and accessibility. A fashion trend
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  should be interesting, which means it should have something
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  new to say or a new take on an old idea. But you don't wanna
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  limit your potential audience. And declaring any given trend as
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  a tween style just doesn't seem to make sense anymore. Or as
• 12:28
  professor Wissinger put
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  Elizabeth Wissinger: it It seems that it's less lucrative to to
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  limit your marketing to a specific age group now than it
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  was then. So if you're a teen and you're showing how to
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  construct a look, if you wanna go viral with your post, you
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  don't wanna post, this look is for teens. You want everybody
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  interested in your look. And if you're an older, more mature
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  influencer, you're not gonna say, well, these outfits are
• 12:53
  only good for 50 and older. You may go in as a mature influencer
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  and say, look, I can look like this as a 50 and older, but
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  really, you can learn from my look no matter what age you are.
• 13:03
  Georgia Hampton: That's why you get 13 year olds dressing like
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  they're athleisure moms. Because the marketing is for as many
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  people as possible. Age specific trends just don't matter in the
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  way they might have in the two thousands. What does matter is
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  having trends that are appealing and interesting to the widest
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  margin of people regardless of how old they are. So for a girl
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  aged 10 to 12, the question is no longer what does a tween girl
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  my age dress like?
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  It's just who do you wanna be? It's more about an aesthetic
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  than anything else. You can be goblin core if you're into
• 13:43
  collecting little trinkets and wearing brown and green, or
• 13:47
  maybe you're a coastal grandma, which means you basically dress
• 13:50
  how Diane Keaton currently dresses, turtlenecks and lots of
• 13:55
  linen. Whatever hyper specific niche you're looking for,
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  there's a mood board for it. The point is that you're the
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  tastemaker of your specific individual style.
• 14:07
  Well, you and your algorithm.
• 14:11
  Elizabeth Wissinger: I mean, there are suites of products
• 14:12
  that people are identified with in terms of the algorithms that
• 14:17
  look at, like, where you shop, when you shop, how you shop,
• 14:20
  what you buy. Like, all of the that information is being
• 14:22
  processed all the time. So the Lululemon people, the kids and
• 14:28
  the moms might be just inside a very narrowly defined
• 14:31
  algorithmic space that markets very specifically to that income
• 14:38
  bracket, geographic location, that ZIP code, that private
• 14:42
  school.
• 14:43
  Georgia Hampton: Okay. So instead of your age mattering in
• 14:47
  regards to fashion trends, it's more about where the algorithm
• 14:50
  can place you geographically, sure, but also monetarily, your
• 14:56
  race, your aesthetic interests, a whole host of other
• 15:00
  signifiers, but not necessarily your age. So instead of limited
• 15:07
  to existing as a tween only space, you have trends that are
• 15:11
  catering to a specific vibe, a specific corner of the
• 15:15
  algorithmic space that the machine brain of the Internet
• 15:18
  has placed you into based on your measurable qualities. But
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  that has its limits. Sure, the algorithm can give you this
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  extremely curated experience that is handpicked for you
• 15:30
  specifically.
• 15:32
  But if there's just more of a certain kind of content and it
• 15:37
  becomes inescapable, the more you interact with it, the more
• 15:41
  the algorithm thinks you like it, rinse and repeat forever. To
• 15:47
  put it another way, those kids Kevin's daughter was talking
• 15:51
  about, like, I'm sure their TikTok for you page looks
• 15:55
  different than mine, but it might not look different from
• 15:59
  other women my age who might, I don't know, be into athleisure
• 16:04
  in a major way.
• 16:07
  Speaker 4: I, like, was scrolling on TikTok, and I see,
• 16:11
  like, like, this girl dancing and then her mom. And they're
• 16:17
  wearing almost identical outfits, but one was blue and
• 16:20
  the other one was pink. They looked the same, but one was
• 16:24
  like twenty years older. I was kinda like, wow.
• 16:30
  Mike Rugnetta: This is real. I don't know.
• 16:36
  Georgia Hampton: Thanks to Kevin and his daughter for sharing
• 16:38
  their thoughts and thanks to professor Elizabeth Wissinger
• 16:42
  for her fascinating insight on all of this. You can read more
• 16:46
  of her work online and in her book, This Year's Model Fashion,
• 16:51
  Media, and the Making of Glamour. There's also a part of
• 16:55
  this story that didn't make it into the episode because I'm
• 16:58
  kind of still parsing through it. Basically, I think there's
• 17:03
  something really wonderful about kids being able to create their
• 17:06
  own fashion identity in this super individual way. But I also
• 17:11
  think it's weird that middle school girls are being mistaken
• 17:14
  for their own parents based on the way they dress.
• 17:17
  And I want to hear what you think about this. How does this
• 17:21
  strike you? How does it make you feel? Call us and leave us a
• 17:24
  voicemail. Send us a voice memo.
• 17:27
  Write us an email. All of the ways you can get a hold of us
• 17:30
  are down in the show notes.
• 18:00
  Mike Rugnetta: That is the archival episode we have for you
• 18:02
  today. If you'd like to listen to the original upload with news
• 18:06
  and interstitials, you can find a link in the show notes. Never
• 18:10
  Post is primarily listener funded. So if you enjoyed this
• 18:14
  segment, please consider becoming a member at neverpo dot
• 18:17
  s t. You can gain access to an ad free member feed while
• 18:21
  helping us keep the show going.
• 18:23
  Never Post's producers are Audrey Evans, Georgia Hampton,
• 18:27
  and the mysterious doctor first name last name. Our senior
• 18:30
  producer is Hans Buto. Our executive producer is Jason
• 18:33
  Oberholzer, and the show's host, that's me, is Mike Rignetta.
• 18:37
  Never Post is a production of Charts and Leisure and is
• 18:40
  distributed by Radiotopia.