Store Fills Void by Giving Preteens Party Dresses Not Too Girlish, Sexy

Pat Perkowski riffles through a rack of party clothes and pulls out the kind of dress a mother would love: puffy sleeves, prim neckline and billowy skirt adorned with a big blue bow.

“This won’t go on an eighth-grade girl unless her parents chain her to it,” says Perkowski, who makes it her business to understand the tastes of fickle preteen girls.

As the mother of two teen-age daughters and the owner of Maison Amie, a formal wear shop in San Clemente that caters to preteens, Perkowski knows too well the trauma of shopping for a girl’s first serious party dress.

As early as January, girls have been coming into her shop to find the perfect dress for their eighth-grade grad night parties.

It’s not easy to look graceful when you’re at the awkward age of 13. Half-child, half-adult, an eighth-grade girl often finds herself in a fashion vacuum where clothes are either too young or too old.

“They’re on the fringe of becoming a teen. It’s one of the most difficult times to dress a girl,” Perkowski says. They’re hard to fit and harder to please.

“They want a more sophisticated look, but their bodies aren’t ready. The puffed sleeves and full skirt--that’s disgusting to them.”

Karey Flint, a 13-year-old San Clemente resident graduating from Shorecliffs Junior High School, found many dresses were too girlish to wear to her graduation dance.

“I didn’t want real puffy sleeves, and I don’t like flowers,” she says. She spotted her dress through the window at Maison Amie: a sleeveless sun dress with “big, thick straps” in red and white polka dots.

“It’s kind of funky,” she says.

Gayle Dains and her daughter Megan, 13, searched everywhere for a graduation dress.

“We spent Easter week in San Francisco and combed the city trying to find a dress,” Gayle says. “Many were way too old or too sophisticated. I wanted something youthful she’d feel good in.”

Megan, 13, who also attends Shorecliffs, agreed with her mother:

“I didn’t want a fancy dress, I wanted a party look. A lot of the dresses made me look too old.”

The Capistrano Beach residents eventually found a strapless floral dress with a short bubble skirt at Maison Amie.

“I’ll have to put straps on it” for the ceremony, Megan says.

Most eighth-grade girls find only a small selection of styles in their size. Perkowski opened her shop eight months ago to fill the void in dresses for preteens.

“Manufacturers and department stores don’t cater to preteens because they’re difficult to fit,” she says.

Many eighth-graders fall between girls’ size 14, which often fits the preteen too large through the waist and too small through the bust, and Size 3 juniors which can fit too narrow through the hips. Only a few dress manufacturers such as Jessica McClintock make clothes in preteen sizes.

To make the job of finding a graduation dress even more difficult, many schools have issued guidelines on what students should and should not wear. At Stacey Intermediate in Huntington Beach, for example, the word from the dean’s office is: “No taffeta, no silk, no strapless.”

“They do a lot of walking and we don’t want things falling down,” says Patrick O’Neal, dean of students for Stacey. O’Neal says the school drew up the guidelines after eighth-graders began over-dressing for the graduation dance.

“Basically what we’re trying to do is tone them down,” O’Neal says. “Several years ago the young men were feeling they had to rent tuxes and the girls had to wear formals. It got a little bit out of hand.” Some boys turned up with top hats and canes in rented limos, while girls chose expensive, sequin-studded formals.

“Now we encourage them to be more informal. We recommend they wear the kind of clothes they’d wear to church on Sunday,” O’Neal says.

One problem schools face is that eighth-grade girls can look sophisticated for their age.

“There are 14-year-olds who dress like 18-year-olds,” says Marilyn Koeller, principal at Harbour View in Huntington Beach. “They can look very grown up, but mentally they’re at all stages.”

Designing for preteens means finding the middle ground that will please both protective mothers and daughters who are in a hurry to grow up.

Jessica McClintock has found a niche in the preteen market by offering brocade fabrics and lace trims that girls love cut into conservative, not frilly, styles. Maison Amie, for instance, carries Jessica McClintock’s pink brocade top with white lace adorning a bib collar and a matching straight skirt for $176.

“We don’t do strapless,” says Carol Russak, divisional sales manager for Jessica McClintock for Girls in San Francisco.

“If we do a sun dress with spaghetti straps, we usually do it with a bolero jacket. Most of our preteen dresses have sleeves.”

The company has found preteens don’t want “babyish prints.” They like larger floral patterns and color.

“One thing we did learn is the dresses can’t be too plain,” Russak says. “They want some trim, either bows or lace.”

Maison Amie also carries dresses by Roberta that fit the preteen’s in-between figure and tastes. There’s an off-the-shoulder floral sheath with a scalloped edge around the neckline for $100 or a navy and white polka dot halter dress with a full skirt for $85.

When a dress is sold for graduation, Perkowski writes the name of the girl’s school on the tag so her classmates will know not to buy it.

“We’re decreasing the odds that another girl will be wearing her dress,” she says.

Different ideas about what’s appropriate for the eighth-grade dance can lead to quarrels between mothers and daughters. Perkowski, who has suffered through two eighth-grade graduations with her daughters, now 16 and 18, has a standard line she uses when she and her girls disagree:

“I know you’re ready for this, but I’m not,” she tells them.

“For mothers who have daughters in the eighth grade for the first time we can say, ‘We know what you’re going through. You do live through it,’ ” Perkowski says. “A mother of sons would never understand this.”