Friday, April 29, 2011

Luxury Brand...For Kids

The Stanford shopping center is one of my favorite places to find ridiculous extravagance. On any given weekend, you'll find at least 10 dogs being pushed around in baby strollers and 3 others wearing designer shoes. No joke. The parking lots are filled with Mercedes, BMWs, and Porches. Well, you get the idea.

What I find the most unnecessary though, are the luxury clothing stores for children. There's a range of offerings from "lower" priced Gap Kids to Crew Cuts by J.Crew to the Burberry Kids Store. Yes, Burberry Kids. I've never been inside, but from having an idea what things cost in their adult stores, I can deduce that it must be pretty ridiculously expensive. Grownups spending that much money on clothing is hardly justifiable as is!

Little children don't know much about luxury brands and how they are different from non-luxury goods. These kinds of knowledge are taught by parents or other adults around them. You can claim that the material used in brand name items are better and may last longer, but why in the world do you need children's clothing to be long lasting anyways? Kids get their clothes dirty and grow out of them in a few months. Paying thousands of dollars for an outfit under these circumstances doesn't seem to be worth it.

I remember showing off a pair of Michael Jordan sneakers to other kids in my class in the 4th grade, telling them those shoes were the coolest things ever. The only reason I thought that was because my dad, a huge basketball fan, told me how "valuable" those shoes were. Otherwise, I wouldn't have known that. The other kids didn't really understand either. Adults buy luxury goods for their kids show off their own status, which in my opinion is irresponsible. Children shouldn't be paraded around as status symbols. The money can be put too much better use in a college fund, donated to charitable organizations, or as a tool to teach the next generation how to use their money more wisely.

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