The Background

Let me just say for the record that I despise shopping. In fact, if I can’t buy it online I will reason myself out of needing it because the thought of going to a store or a mall freaks me out. When I received an invitation to participate in a Focus Group regarding kid’s fashion I decided to invite my sister-in-law Renee. She is a new blogger over at http://sahwannabe.blogspot.com (go check her out).

Now my sister-in-law is a shopper. In fact, she puts the “hop” in “shopper”. Going shopping with her is a practice in insanity and patience. She lives for Black Friday heading out early in the morning and will stay out all day going from store to store. And she likes name brands. I, on the other hand, like budget-friendly. Luckily for me her daughter is 5 and my daughter is 3 so I get the benefits of her love of shopping when she passes down clothes to my daughter. For this reason I thought that the Focus Group would benefit from having such different shoppers.

Renee and I had the pleasure of joining several other moms and Maria Bailey at the Parigi Group Manhattan offices to discuss high-end children’s fashion. I knew nothing about the Parigi Group before this event but was excited to learn that the company manages the children’s apparel lines Baby Phat, Puma Kids, Akademics (Boys), LRG, and Apple Bottom brands. In other words, they determine how these products are sold, marketing, and even designed.

And they wanted our input.

The Clothes

I never heard of LRG before and didn’t realize that Apple Bottom made clothes for kids. Truthfully the Apple Bottom lined turned me off before I had even seen it because I don’t like what it represents. Despite the fact the some of the dresses were cute, to me putting my child in them would be supporting a brand and a person that objectifies women. The Puma Kids line was my favorite. I am a sporty dress and my daughter (3.5) is far from a girly-girl. The Puma Kids line was cute and comfortable. Akademics is a great line for boys (unfortunately the girls line is represented by another firm) and there are some shirts that I would definitely buy for my daughter.

The Discussion

What I really enjoyed- apart from seeing the amazing clothing that these lines offered- was how Sion Betesh, Executive Vice President of Licensing and Marketing at Parigi, and the sales team really listened to our responses to their questions about fashion for children and social media. We discussed everything from how we shop for our children to where we shopped. We even discussed just how important social media is in shaping our buying decisions. It was really interesting watching the reaction from the sales team when they realized that social media is as big and important to us moms as it has become.

For me some of the issues were the embellishments on the back pockets of the girls clothes, the size and placement of the logo, functionality of pants for babies in diapers (needed snaps down the legs), and not wanting to see clothes that were actually adult designs scaled down. I think children need to be children for as long as possible and we as parents and fashion designers should not force them to grow up so fast. Raising girls is so hard and shopping for them is so frustrating when you feel like designers look at your child as objects and not as innocent kids.

You can go to Twitter and get more details about the discussion by following the hashtag #parigifashions

I think it is so important that we parents make our concerns heard. So, here are a few of Parigi’s questions. Please feel free to leave your own responses in the comment section.

• Who buys the clothes for your children?
• How do you decide what to buy and where to shop?
• Do you like name brands and do you buy them often?
• Do you have brand loyalty when shopping for you children? How did you “choose” that loyalty?
• Are you more interested in quality or price?
• How does time play into how you shop, where you shop, and what you buy?
• In what ways do you think that Parigi should enter the social networking/media realm? Should it be in a general kid’s fashion capacity or one geared more towards specific happenings with the brands?

*Disclosure: We received $100 gift certificates to Macy’s for participating in the Focus Group. We were not asked to nor required to write about this event and all information included in my post is from my own notes written while participating in the discussion. We did not know which Apparel Company we were meeting with until we arrived.

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