Junior Clothes Grow Up, Go to Work

A funny thing happened as career women moved up the corporate ladder--they kept patronizing the junior boutiques they discovered in their teens.

The typical junior customer used to be a teen-ager of junior-high, high-school or college age. But now the group includes 18- to 34-year-olds, who want to spend about $100 for an outfit, and expect more sophisticated, up-to-the-minute style for their money.

The retail world has dubbed this special group “crossover customers.” While they are beyond their teens, many still wear single-digit sizes and follow fashion trends.

At a recent fashion show/seminar sponsored by Richman Danford Directives West, a fashion consulting firm and buying office that specializes in junior divisions, the audience of store buyers talked most about the changing face of the junior customer.

“The contemporary junior market was practically created here,” says Francine Browner, owner of the L.A.-based junior wear manufacturer, Rue de Reves, whose designs carry the Hearts label.

Demographics have a lot to do with department stores’ expanding junior divisions as well as the success of junior boutiques in malls, she says.

“The market grew with the baby boomer,” Browner adds. “In the last 10 years, those women finished college. They were used to shopping in junior specialty stores, and couldn’t find what they wanted anywhere else, for the price they could pay.” So they never left.

Browner says the number of career women still shopping the junior department has broadened.

Terry Melville, vice president and fashion director of juniors for Macy’s corporate headquarters in New York, agrees that women who buy junior styles share a common denominator. “It’s not so much an age as an attitude,” she says. “These women all want to keep up with cutting-edge fashion at an affordable price.”

Wendy Manasse Wiese, a 30-year-old designer for Catalina Swimwear, says she relies on junior boutiques and departments for the bulk of her career and weekend wear.

“You can always pick up on a trend without making a major investment,” she says of the clothes.

Thirty-eight-year-old Kathy Acquaviva, director of media relations for the West Coast Atlantic Records, frequents such trendy haunts as Contempo Casuals, Judy’s and the Limited, in malls.

“There is always an incredible selection of fashionable clothes in my size,” she finds.

Acquaviva, who wears Size 3 or 5, says many stores that stock only women’s ready-to-wear are “a little too conservative” for her weekend and career wear. Though saving money is not her primary objective for shopping the junior department, it is an added bonus.

Are thirtysomething women put off by shopping around clusters of teen-agers? Acquaviva says she isn’t.

“I love looking at what the younger people wear, I think they have a wonderful way of putting things together when they shop.”