Teenage Wasteland…How to Dress a Teenager

The hardest most complicated emotionally distressing job to date… Shopping for your barely teenage daughters for a Homecoming Dance. I can honestly give them the highest ranking of the “most difficult to please” client. Let me preface this however that this is not truly the twins’ fault. Their mother is a stylist and has very high standards about what clothing should be and look like on every individual. The girls have watched, from birth, me and my team meticulously dress clients and critique every ensemble ever.  They both have strong and distinctly different personalities. They also have clear ideas in their head about what things should look like and feel like and what is and isn’t flattering. My job, that I love, and the ALG mission is for every client, man, woman, child, in any budget, of any creed… drag queens to Mardi Gras queens…to look and feel amazing.  I want this more than ever for my young daughters at their very first dance and it breaks my heart me and has brought me to tears (them too) that I cannot find something that they adore.

Part of the issue, not only do the schools have a long list of rules and regulations about a what a young lady should wear (and rightfully so,) a young girl’s body is not quite ready for women’s dress sizes and mature styles. On the contrary, young ladies do not want to wear anything that’s being touted as “big girls” or “juniors.” There are not articles of clothing even made that fit this “I almost have hips and what am I supposed to do with these breast things” category.  The young ladies are checked at the door to see if the dress is too short, too sheer or too low cut. They are also prohibited from wearing sleeveless dresses, spaghetti straps or a back cut below the bra line. I applaud the regulations because these are young kids and the dance floor should not be confused for a Kardashian Party in Vegas.

Here lies the largest problem. I have been to almost every local boutique twice. That’s 44 trips if we are counting. I have shopped every single department store. I have scoured the online big box retailers. My options are this, an over grown Toddlers and Tiaras or a miniature version of any Real Housewife ever. It’s disgusting and ridiculous. The fabrics are cheap, bedazzled, highly flammable and are NC-17 short. How in the world am I not to send off my babies who have barely hit puberty looking like stripper? No offense to strippers, but there is time and place for everything.