I waded through through the bubbling sulfur pit of Hades—also known as shopping for teenage daughters—and I’ve lived to tell the tale.
The plunge from adorable grosgrain bows and smocked dresses to a wannabe-sexy hellscape happened seemingly overnight, a phase I referred to as “four going on whore.” All of a sudden, my cherubic girls wanted to wear those faux-Lucite high heels, glitter nail polish, clip-on earrings, and JonBenét-esque lipstick in an effort to look older. At 10, my daughter Sadie tried to walk out of the house in a friend’s borrowed bandage dress, and I reacted like Jackie Kennedy in the Zapruder film.
Despite my best efforts to sway them back to sanity, both of my daughters went through a fashion phase that skewed sex worker. One phrase that I hope I never hear again is “bodycon.” When they whined on about the latest revealing outfit, exclaiming, “Everyone has one but me!” I replied that A, I don’t care, and B, as we said in my show, Odd Mom Out, “the tighter the dress, the looser the vagina.”
When fashion designer Azzedine Alaïa passed away and everyone hailed the late, great “king of cling,” they were praising his original work on Naomi Cambell, Linda Evangelista, and Christy Turlington—not knockoffs on bat-mitzvah-bound coltish teens. Naturally, it’s an age-old desire to dress older than one’s years, but since I refused to buy revealing clothing for Sadie and Ivy, I never really worried.
Does “sexy milkmaid” constitute a compromise?
But then I realized that as they grew, a normal dress becomes bodycon, and suddenly, you’re pulling it out of their hands, quoting Patsy from Absolutely Fabulous: with a hemline like that, “the world’s your gynecologist!”
My girls are in college now, and I’m out of the woods. Now it’s almost fun going shopping. We’ve all found that Hill House Home has a wide array of the cult-collected Nap Dresses. Tweens to 20s can dress them up or down and look wholesome but not too covered up. Does “sexy milkmaid” constitute a compromise?
La Ligne, which began as a stripe-centric line of sweaters and knits from former Vogue editors Meredith Melling and Valerie Boster, also has fabulous options that can be dressed up for parties, or dressed down for school days. Re-Ligne, their pre-loved online store, has plenty of old styles for less.
Batsheva and Self-Portrait also have really great sales, and many of their clothes come in extra-small sizes for your younger tween types.
Rouje, the French It-Girl label, has landed Stateside just in time for the holidays. Another Parisian resource is Réalisation Par, which has adorable heart-print tops and feminine silhouettes.
Thanks to TikTok, teens are all about vintage stores, which, while great for the planet, can A, smell like dead people, and/or B, fit like Marilyn’s dress on Kim Kardashian. And since you can’t ask for the next size up, teens’ tender hearts can get set on something that’s just not suitable.
One killer website my girls and I love is Vestiaire, which is the French version of the Real Real, but a trillion times better, because it teaches your teen to bargain for an agreed-upon price. Sadie and Ivy now research comps online and then make an offer, which is usually accepted—these are some of the best buys on the Internet.
And finally, holiday gifts for teens can often include a little sparkle. Catbird, in Brooklyn, is my go-to gift shop for tiny shiny jewelry and small stocking stuffers, and the girls love the boutique Pistache NYC and the L.A.-based Etsy shop Caitlyn Minimalist for dainty, glittering things. So happy holiday shopping, and cheers to Peace on Earth—as well as peace between moms and daughters.
Jill Kargman is the author of Sprinkle Glitter on My Grave and Sometimes I Feel Like a Nut. She also created and starred in the Peacock series Odd Mom Out
