girls clothes

Tired Of Pink And Blue Kids Clothing, Chicago Women Launch Earth-Friendly (And Non-Gendered) Children's Clothing Line - Block Club Chicago
Baby Girl Clothes - The Woodlands Texas Clothes & Accessories For Sale - Clothes Infants - Toddlers - Woodlands Online
The Secret Shame of Wearing Brandy Melville - The Cut

Tired Of Pink And Blue Kids Clothing, Chicago Women Launch Earth-Friendly (And Non-Gendered) Children's Clothing Line - Block Club Chicago

Posted: 07 Oct 2019 02:10 AM PDT

CHICAGO — Parents know the drill: get grilled about the sex of your child during pregnancy, and expect an onslaught of pink or blue everything at the shower depending on the answer.

Though gender stereotypes are decidedly less relevant in 2019, the kids clothing world remains hyper-gendered — and local fashion designer and mom Melissa Serpico Kamhout is out to change that.

Serpico Kamhout never set our to design kids clothes, but after her fraternal twins — a boy and a girl — started developing their own style and personality, the idea began to take hold.

"My son loves bright colors and my daughter was starting to think that it wasn't right for him to wear them," Serpico Kamhout said. "They were really kind of reading into gender stereotypes from a young age."

When the family went shopping, it was difficult to find clothes they both liked that wasn't gender specific. That's when she realized there was a need for gender-neutral children's wear that was also environmentally friendly.

So, Serpico Kamhout co-founded ALIKE Kids with business partner Kaitlin Meyer, and the brand officially launched online Sept. 28 after two years of development.

ALIKE's unisex pieces aim to shatter gender stereotypes in the fashion industry at a young age while also showcasing the impact of fashion waste on the environment. All ALIKE clothes are made with organic cotton and are digitally printed with non-toxic water-based ink in the U.S.

"We were lucky enough to find a fabric mill in in Los Angeles that actually knits the fabric there, because there are not very many fabric mills left here," Serpico Kamhout said. "Even the tags are made in LA [through] heat transfer."

Serpico Kamhout, who lives in Wicker Park, said each print is designed in-house to minimize fabric waste during the cutting process, ensuring that no two shirts are identical but look "alike." The comfy cotton fit is ideal for both boys and girls with six sizes ranging from 4 to 14.

The first collection, which includes five t-shirts and upcycled denim pants, is inspired by Andy Warhol, 1970's glam rock and Pablo Picasso paintings. The clothing features bright, bold colors and patterns with Serpico Kamhout's hand-drawn designs.

She said the handwritten aspect let her be creative while adding the brand tagline — "We are more alike than not" — that can also double as a positive message to children.

The company also has a philanthropic angle. For every product sold, they will donate to a nonprofit called Blessings in a Backpack, which sends a backpack full of food to children on the weekends that might otherwise go hungry, Meyer said.

While the t-shirts are currently sold at a steep $52 due to production costs and the company's small profit margin, the founders said they hope to lower the price as demand grows and make the clothes accessible to every economic bracket.

Both said ALIKE is just starting to find its place in the fashion industry and they have ideas up their sleeves to expand. They plan to extend their line to joggers, long-sleeves shirts, pea coats and sweaters — and possibly clothing for adults.

They hope to be inclusive of all children and family structures and for those looking to be more sustainable, while educating people on where their clothes come from.

"What's really important is that people look at production differently, and maybe think about changing their buying habits," Serpico Kamhout said.

Meyer, a Lincoln Park resident who works in finance, said it was challenging and expensive to do things like minimize packaging waste — but it was worth it.

"[We are] making a change, sustainability in fashion," Meyer said. "And for children, it's great to have the ability to grow up not subscribing to a specific gender."

She said the retail landscape is changing and as online shopping explodes, it's more important to have a distinct brand that has a moral standing and less important to have a physical store.

Meyer said as the demand for organic products grows, so does the knowledge about toxic chemicals in clothing and its impact on the environment.

"I think people's mindsets have changed and it's easier to have these brands of ideas and bring these colors into things," she said. "People really care about organic cotton so it fits a need in the market right now."

ALIKE's packaging is also environmentally sustainable, right down to the bags the t-shirts come in — they are compostable and the tissue paper is acid-free. They also use No Issue, a sustainable packaging company that plants a tree each time an order is placed through its Eco-Packaging Alliance program.

The company still uses some plastic in production but hopes to cut out all plastic within a year.

The founders hope ALIKE can inspire parents to think outside the gender box when it comes to kids clothing.

"They should be free to choose what they want — and it should be without any backlash," Serpico Kamhout said.

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Posted: 07 Oct 2019 12:48 AM PDT

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The Secret Shame of Wearing Brandy Melville - The Cut

Posted: 03 Oct 2019 06:00 AM PDT

Not adults. Photo: Brandy Melville/Facebook

Alyssa Coscarelli is a sunny Instagram influencer in her late 20s — a former Refinery29 employee who is flown to various fashion weeks and tends to dress in downtown-ish brands like Maryam Nassir Zadeh, or Sandy Liang. This summer, she posted a picture of herself in a ribbed tank top from, of all places, the teen-girl chain Brandy Melville. "I just love their tanks and tees," she wrote. "Though I know it's kind of a [emoji of a trash can] brand."

What you know about Brandy Melville depends on who you are. If you're a teen mall girl, it's an obvious place to buy shrunken, deeply inexpensive, decidedly Gen Z clothing. If you're someone who reads a lot of Twitter, you might know it from headlines like "Brandy Melville Epitomizes What Is Wrong With Our Society," which tend to pop up every six months thanks to its tightly conscribed size range and lack of diversity, both in its stores and online. But if you're a millennial with connections to the fashion world, it might be the place where you're shopping when no one is looking. There's a growing cult of genuinely stylish, slightly abashed 20- and even 30-somethings turning to the brand for nostalgic, low-commitment (hardly anything is priced over $35) spaghetti-strap dresses and tube tops that would look as natural on Bella Hadid today as they would on Simple Life–era Paris Hilton.

Carmen Rosey Hall, a writer at Vogue, buys legions of the brand's tiny, babydoll tees ("so many of them," she says. "My guiltiest pleasure."). Alison Chemla, the founder of fashion-girl favorite jewelry line Alison Lou, is a fervent, vocal fan of Brandy Melville's Regina George–esque sweatpants. And Eden Deering, a curator at the Chelsea gallery P.P.O.W., buys Brandy Melville tube tops en masse ("only after 6 p.m.," she says "so no one I know who works in Soho will see me").

Then there's Lauren Servideo, a 27-year-old comic Vogue dubbed the Funniest Person on Instagram. She's been posting a series of videos of herself posing in Brandy tops, pretending to be one of the disaffected teens that tend to work in the stores. ("The number of times I've left that store questioning how well I know myself," responded one of her followers, herself a nearly 30-year-old woman).

Or take Dasha Nekrasova, the 27-year-old provocateur, actress, and host of cultural commentary podcast Red Scare. Nekrasova, who might be best described as fashion-adjacent (she recently signed as a model, and walked in Rachel Comey and Eckhaus Latta's Spring 2019 shows) posted a string of Brandy Melville-related tweets last July. First, she mused: "Brandy Melville is really doing something right." Then, later, around 3am: "Did I talk about Brandy Melville too much at the party?" (The New Yorker writer Naomi Fry responded: "No.") A few weeks later, Nekrasova spoke once again about the brand in an interview chronicling her shopping habits. "I know it's essentially fascistic that everything is one size," she says, referring to Brandy Melville's so-called "one-size-fits-all" policy (predictably, the clothes really only fit all thin people). "But I feel euphoric in there."

Brandy Melville, which was founded in Italy in the early '80s, opened its first U.S. location in Westwood in 2009. It was an immediate hit with teens across the country ("What girl, from the age of 12 on, doesn't include Brandy in her wardrobe?" opined self-describes "teen fashion enthusiast" Lani Renaldo in a HuffPost article in 2014). Which makes sense: The brand's product-research team is (quite brilliantly) made up exclusively of Malibu-based teenage girls, the prices are low, and the aesthetic is aspirational but with an emphasis on teen authenticity (they don't advertise or use professional models — instead, they flood their Instagram account with pictures of their skinniest, most long-legged, long-haired customers).

In the ten or so years since the first store opened, Brandy Melville has continued to thrive (according to the Fashion Law, the privately held company likely brought in somewhere around $300 million in 2018) despite near-constant reports about unethical practices. A quick scan on Glassdoor, a review site for companies, reveals that hundreds of former Brandy employees have complained of discriminatory practices around hiring, firing, and pay. "Your pay rate is 100% determined by your appearance," wrote one woman, who worked as a salesgirl at the Westwood location for over three years. "You will get fired for gaining weight or cutting your hair," wrote another. Said a third, plainly: "You will not get hired at a Brandy store if you're black."

Then there's the brand's bizarre fascination with Ayn Rand. Brandy's (now shuttered) sister brand was called John Galt (a character in Atlas Shrugged), and for years, Brandy Melville stores sold T-shirts printed with quotes attributed to the author. Early stores apparently sold copies of Atlas Shrugged, Commentary magazine, and publications from the Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute — a little libertarian, freedom-of-choice ideology slipped ironically in between lavender bike shorts and plaid miniskirts that only come in a single size.

Two Instagram stories from influencer Alyssa Coscarelli. Photo: alyssainthecity/Instagram

Still, despite the fact that the brand is shamelessly politically incorrect, apparently obsessed with objectivism, and decorates its stores with signs that read things like "Dat Shit Cray," its cult of discerning adult fans continues to grow. On one level, the appeal is obvious — it's cute, nostalgic, and cheap. Coscarelli says, "They make ideal '90s-ish throwback pieces you never really find at vintage stores but wish you could: baby tees, cropped plaid pants, mini skirts, spaghetti-strap tanks," she says. But for those who are aware of the brand's bad politics and business practices, wearing it is complicated: It's an in-joke that's not really a joke, because you're still giving them money. Talking about it in public, or on social media, is a way of easing the discomfort of shopping there.

For Servideo, it seems, there's a sort of ironic pleasure in wearing clothing aimed at teens as an adult woman. In one of her videos, she wears an ill-fitting Brandy sweater and Brandy pants that won't close at the waist. "My mom says I can get my bellybutton pierced," she intones, looking at the camera. Then: "My boyfriend goes to a different high school — he has his learner's permit." For Nekrasova, who is obstinately anti-PC-everything, there's a sort of edgelord posturing; it's subversive to associate yourself publicly with a company that's so unreservedly unconcerned with inclusive sizing, or rejecting far-right ideology, or fair labor practices. And for some people, it's a subtle brag: You have to be thin in order to get away with wearing one-size-fits-all clothing, when the one size is XS.

And then there's the brand's intangible throwback affect. Between the '90s styling, the pre-woke politics, and the literal cabal of teen girls deciding what's cool and what's not, stepping into a Brandy Melville store is like stepping back in time. Which points to another mall brand that millennials love to talk about.

"They remind me so much of Abercrombie, where everyone my age shopped, or wanted to shop at, in middle school," says Servideo. "The girls working there are beautiful and 14, and cultivate this intentionally casual environment — they say 'what's up,' instead of 'welcome to Brandy Melville.' That's the exact same thing they did there — 'what's up' with this bored stare. They evoke a memory of our generation."

The irony, of course, is that the more you post about how embarrassed you are about shopping at Brandy, the more you discover who else is shopping at Brandy. A couple of weeks ago, Servideo messaged her friend Summer Dawn — a late-20s influencer and stylist at the luxury clothing department store the Webster — to ask her where she got her tank top from. "She responded, 'Are you okay in the head, sis? It's obviously Brandy Melville.'"