Gotta Have It
Doug MacInnis has just been “hot picked” by two 17-year-old girls. “Awesome” he says, chatting up the teens who have declared his retro rock concert T-shirts--emblazoned with the Who, the Doors and Miles Davis--”sweet.” Translation: cool.
Never mind that their parents grooved to these musical legends, Natashia Lewis of Woodland Hills and Ashley Jackson of Cincinnati agree the garments deserve their “Hot Pick” tags of righteous teen style.
MacInnis realizes that the trend-spotting duo from Teen People magazine may be too young to vote, but their nod to his Jonny Rock creations is as solid as a vote for “American Idol’s” Kelly Clarkson. So he proudly displays the “sweet” badges.
“This is as good as a celebrity endorsement,” MacInnis says as the two politely apologize for not hanging around to gab at his booth during last week’s MAGIC trade show for store buyers. The girls are shopping, in a manner of speaking. So are the other two girls and two guys who beat out thousands of the magazine’s readers for the free trip, $50 and the challenge to sniff out trends for the monthly’s staff and advertisers.
Lewis and Jackson scramble off, maneuvering a maze of products on a football field-sized convention floor at the Sands Expo Center, searching for whatever catches their fancy. In other words: stuff a girl’s gotta have.
In one day, the style posse will whittle an initial 50 picks each down to two. The next day they’ll rap about their selections in a panel discussion before retailers eager to learn which items the young shoppers predict to have “ka-ching” power. Teenagers 13 to 17 spent $21 billion on apparel--their biggest expenditure, followed by entertainment--in 2001, up 4% from the year before, according to NPDFashionworld, a market information firm based in Port Washington, N.Y.
The trend spotters shamelessly love clothes, visiting malls five to 10 times a month, spending anywhere from $250 to $1,500. They play fashion like a game of blackjack, sometimes forking over entire paychecks from their part-time jobs to buy looks they believe will have style longevity. But here, they can only browse. And jot down notes about color, fabric and price as if researching a term paper.
For nearly six hours, Lewis and Jackson and the other scouts, ages 16 to 20, roam among the 3,000 clothing and accessories booths that exhibitors have set up in various convention halls tempting visitors with vintage-looking tops and dresses, jewelry, paint-your-own tattoos and denim with every imaginable rinse application, bleached to near extinction. At the Sands alone, more than 1,000 vendors lure buyers with the newest, latest and hippest this and that.
But the sleuths, paired in three teams and shadowed by three chaperons, are nobody’s fools. They’ve done the bohemian/hippie chic/disco diva/surfer dude/hip-hop/denim-to-death style thing. They’ve created their own rebellious looks, deconstructed clothes, frayed and fringed garments, turned them upside down and inside out with nothing more than scissors and a razor. And whenever possible, sure they’ll break school dress codes.
“We can’t wear spaghetti straps, can’t show any midriff even when you raise your hand, skirts and shorts can’t measure more than 6 inches from the middle of your knee and up,” Jackson laments. And get this, she says, laughing, “no fringed or frayed jeans because that’s a fire hazard.”
On this day their radar is homing in on “what’s next” not “what’s now.” They’re too savvy for even the slickest of hawkers in this carnival sideshow atmosphere, though many tempt these pop-culture human sponges with silly come-ons and promises of one-of-a-kind looks.
“Look at this, we’re the only ones with this vintage look,” announces a woman holding up a brown boogie-woogie 1940s sheath.
“I’ve seen that same brown color on vintage stuff everywhere,” says Jackson, a lover of all things that look thrift-shop cool. “I’m waiting to see some fun colors, something that will catch my eye. But right now I don’t see anything. Where’s green? Yellow? Pink? I want something new.”
As if on cue, she spots a retro pink, cherry-print cotton dress inspired by Marilyn Monroe, says its designer, Nicole Beckett, in a sweetly alluring MM-like voice. “I love cherries,” Jackson tells her. “This is definitely something I would buy” and hot picks the dress she describes as school-and date-appropriate and would meet the parent test. The dress, which will retail for $35, is edgy enough to become one of her two selections, along with a French terry miniskirt.
Like her new pals, Jackson’s no pushover. Neither is she easily swayed by advertising gimmicks nor duped by low-quality stuff with high prices. She’s loyal to certain brands but open to others. Most purchases are planned, but like the others, she never leaves a mall empty-handed, even if it’s with an inexpensive pair of earrings.
Soon a collective profile that could be dubbed “Secrets of Sin City Teen Shoppers” emerges as the group huddles on the floor at day’s end exhausted, backpacks used as pillows. They share information with each other and again the next day with grown-ups at the panel session.
They agree that among the trendiest brands are Hot Kiss, Guess, Rampage and XOXO. Their favorite quality brands are Abercrombie & Fitch, French Connection, Polo and Express. For value: Old Navy. For the hippest advertising, unanimously Target. The chain also garners high marks for one-stop shopping: cosmetics, jeans, jammies, T-shirts, “you name it,” Lewis says, everyone nodding.
Their fashion direction comes from music videos, young celebrities like Mandy Moore (not Britney Spears, a favorite of preteens), their peers and the movies--not high-fashion magazines like Vogue. “We don’t want to buy things worn by women in their 30s,” says Lewis, a credit card shopper with limits set by her parents, who foot the bill.
They do make investment purchases, however; especially garments that can take them from a day at school to a weekend date, and tops that dress up or dress down a pair of jeans.
“Versatility is my main concern,” says Liana Sulgit, 17, of Cupertino, near San Francisco. “When I shop, I’m not looking for something I can just wear once. Whether we work or not, teens are on a budget. We can’t spend $75 on a shirt we’ll wear only once.”
But everyone agrees they will spend $100 or more on well-fitting jeans they equate with comfort and durability. “I have a pair of Abercrombie & Fitch jeans I’ve worn for two years,” confesses Sulgit about her favorite brand, adding she paid close to $80 for the jeans.
“What good is an inexpensive pair of jeans if they don’t fit well?” says Lewis, an academic prodigy who graduated from USC at 16 and is beginning on a joint medical and doctorate program at UCLA. In her spare time, she enjoys karaoke and acting. Her final two choices are low-rise, resin-coated jeans by Mudd, a brand she buys, and black suede Carlos Santana sandals.
Chris Heinz, 17, from Naperville, Ill., near Chicago, admits to a denim dependency. He owns 30 pairs and is crazy for Sean John’s new luxe Blue line--especially the oxidized and painted jeans--that lands in stores later this month. Those $260 jeans are among his six hot picks, but his final two are a color-popping Custo of Barcelona long-sleeved T-shirt and brown-tinted Guess? jeans, each slightly under $100.
Heinz was impressed by how designers “are becoming more detailed about the color of the stitching on the sides of jeans or how the neck of a shirt is cut. Maybe they’re paying attention because we’re paying attention. They’re just not tossing stuff together and assuming teenagers will buy anything. I respect that, which is why I’d buy it.”
Variations on cookie-cutter fashions are also welcome. Enough already “with the same old stuff,” says Kristin Martinez, 20, a University of Nevada, Las Vegas coed studying criminal justice. From her 10 hot picks, including bellybutton lighted jewelry (she raises her top to reveal her own $200 jeweled bellybutton ring), her two winners: A Jonny Rock “Madonna” hooded top, frayed at the edges, and dirty-looking jeans (made by, duh, Dirty Jeans) with a brown suede stripe down the sides, tuxedo-style.
Loyal to certain brands, the experience of trend spotting “opened my eyes to more than just XOXO,” says Martinez, who also gleaned ideas for sewing and reinventing her wardrobe, something she did in high school. These days she spends $200 to $300 per shopping trip.
In contrast, Peter Dunn, 16, of New York City is big on spending little ($5 on thrift-store shirts he slashes sleeveless) and bleaching his own jeans. “I did these myself,” he says, showing off jeans he “whiskered” by brushing bleach across the front with a stencil pattern photocopied from another pair.
Dunn’s two picks are a Lucky brand mechanic-inspired jean jacket and jeans with a permanent wrinkle from Sean Jean’s Blue line. Both give a vintage edge to the teen’s urban-preppy style.
“If you’re wearing something that no one else has and you got it cheap at a thrift store, that’s even cooler,” he says, adding he spends $60 and more a month on jeans but not on baggies. That look is “slowly going out of style. A lot of guys are going for fitted, boot-cut trousers. Guys have become so fashion-savvy, paying more attention to their appearance. That’s really what fashion is about.”
Sulgit agrees. “When I leave the house in the morning and look at myself in the mirror, I have to like what I’m wearing. Sometimes people will wear something because that’s what everybody else is wearing or because that’s what Britney Spears wore. But there’s a reason why Britney wore it, and that’s why I don’t wear it.”
Lewis says she’s as picky as they come. “That’s really the only way we can empower ourselves as teenagers when we shop--by being selective. With every purchase we say something about the clothes we are buying because we really are an important consumer. We should have a say in what is being created for us.”
For two days, they did. The verdict? For all of their predictions, the most startling development was how unpredictable teenagers can be, says Jorge Ramon, Teen People’s fashion director.
“I was blown away by hearing how the cost of something isn’t that important with these kids when all along I thought price would be a real big concern,” Ramon says of the third trend-spotting team sent to MAGIC. “It seems that style and fit are their main concerns, and price really fell by the wayside,” he says. “The whole marketing of teenagers is such an important thing because as we found out today, the recession isn’t affecting these guys.”
