‘Tis Schooltide Season : Shoppers Lift Any Mall Pall
When he saw them, Ryan Manley knew they were the sneakers of his dreams.
Across the black canvas toes, green plastic snakes stuck forked tongues menacingly at the red rubber rims--decorated with black spider webs. The Westminster third-grader displayed one proudly in the shoe store.
“It has spiders inside! It has a big, fat snake on the bottom,” he said turning it over.
He pulled out the laces. “It says snakes and spiders on the laces!”
Did he care whether they fit? “No!”
For back-to-school shoppers determined to have the right stuff, there is no shoe too small, no pair of acid-washed jeans too tight, no dinosaur suspenders too expensive for their mother to buy. For most of the youngsters spending a recent afternoon in the Westminster Mall, the only stumbling block to looking good appeared to be the size of Mom’s wallet and resolve.
“Mom! Look!” said a boy of about 10 years, pulling a pair of pink overalls from the rack at Robinson’s. “Would you wear pink ?” Mom asked with cool incredulity.
“Yeah!” he replied.
“No, you wouldn’t,” she told him. They left.
On the other hand, Krystal Flores, 6, already wearing pink shorts and a pink T-shirt, got exactly what she wanted: fancy shoes. In pink. Her parents, Laurie and Francis Flores of Honolulu, tried to steer her toward more practical sneakers. But after 15 minutes Krystal skipped out of Stride Rite in the shiny pink shoes with the pink roses on top while her parents left with a receipt for $32.50.
“It was more than we’d spend at home, but she wanted them,” sighed her mother.
Meanwhile around the mall, amorous teen-aged couples, pairs of girlfriends and packs of preteen boys roved past the window displays of denim jackets, denim jeans and denim skirts--all bleached and washed to look like hand-me-downs.
“They die for them,” said Loan Le, 21, who had taken her younger sisters and brother shopping.
Clarissa Le, 10, wanted the last pair of acid-washed jeans at The Little Folks Shop, even though they were too small. But Loan insisted they look elsewhere. “When your parents are on a tight budget, you don’t get things you don’t need,” she said.
The back-to-school season is a major one for many retailers. Fall sales often foreshadow winter holiday business, they said. This fall season seems even bigger than last Christmas, and it hasn’t peaked yet, said Karla Bergman, manager of The Limited, a young woman’s clothing store at the Westminster Mall.
“The young girls are buying large quantities of stuff. We’re selling complete outfits from head to toe. Not just one item.”
But none of this mattered to Adam Edell, 5, who is about to enter kindergarten and already knows what he doesn’t like. “Can you tell me why you don’t like this?” asked his mother Kathy, holding up a $3.99 T-shirt. Adam shoved his fists into his overalls and shook his head silently side to side. He wanted the $19.99 denim jacket and the dinosaur suspenders. “It’s my favorite dinosaur,” he said. “It’s a steggie . . . stegisor . . . stegosaurus!”
In the trendy young women’s shops, mothers of teen-aged daughters seemed confused by the adultlike fashions. “I can’t see that,” said one mother, wrinkling her nose at a $25 leopard-print jersey miniskirt.
Another Mom argued: “If you don’t like it, I can wear it.”
In the young men’s shop, two college sophomores browsing through baggie sweaters explained the evolution of their fashion philosophy. “In high school, you have a more defined peer group,” said Mike Radu, a UCLA junior from Fountain Valley.
“In college, you come as you are,” added Corey Fournier, a Long Beach State sophomore. “There’s no one to impress.”
Besides, students spend their own money by college.
Still using Mom’s money, two sophomores from Marina High School walked in seeking suspenders. With their heads nearly shaved and their feet encased in heavy boots, Joe Sprankle and Joe Sejuit, both 15, looked like Marine recruits but said they were only partly finished shopping for their identical “skinhead” look. They needed preppie shirts (“buttoned up to show pride”), work pants from K-Mart (“you peg them”), suspenders (“up or down”) and “a smile.”
“You don’t want to be jocks or trendies,” Sprankle said. “They’re jerks.”
One shopper was glad not to be going back to school. At 25, Tom Gawronski, a Wisconsin accountant on vacation with his girlfriend, wore a T-shirt proclaiming that he was still “Learning to Shop.” Had he learned anything so far? “Patience.”
