Saturday, January 17, 2009
It ain't easy being my kid.
Can you see that teeny tiny Aeropostale label at the top of this post? It's very important to Kate. Her sister Ana came home from high school once, and announced to us that , "the popular kids at school wear only "Aeropostale clothing" . Kate promptly emptied her closet, and ditched everything that wasn't Aeropostale. One fine cold winter Kate only had one pair of jeans, and a couple of tops left. She would wear skirts in the snow because she refused to wear her last pair of pants because they weren't Aeropostale either, and neither was her winter coat. You get the picture.
I took our Aeropostale clothing pieces that were too small, and donated them to the poor, but not before I removed the labels , and I sewed them into a sensible pair of jeans. I had her try on those impostor jeans , and she squinted her eyes at me , while I said " oh, those jeans are cute, and they're Aeropostale!!" She just stared me down , and said............ u m , y e a h.
Like that guy in the "office space movie". I said, "well they are" -"just look at the Label." She never figured it out, and she never wore those jeans. Kate now has a closet full of "Aeropostal" clothing, I pray to God that no one ever says's anything negative to her about her clothing . I don't want to switch out her closet brands again.
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4 comments:
Manufacturers really make it hard for moms when they sew the labels on the outside (of course that's the whole idea, so you have to buy their stuff). But some of us are crafty, like you, and recycle the labels. When I was a teen, the big thing was Garland sweaters. They were real wool and itched like crazy. But they were cool. However the labels weren't on the outside, so I could pretend they were Garlands, even if they weren't. I think it's different with boys; my kids didn't seem to care about labels, as long as they didn't look "preppy". I overdosed them on Izod sweaters when they were little; I'd buy them at the thrift store, thinking I was doing them a favor. "Look, it's an Izod!" "Um, Mom, am I supposed to care?"
It's hard to make a person who is disabled understand that labels don't matter. Our child is trying sooo very hard to fit in. Our other children don't care about this stuff.
Well what about buying Aeropostale stuff at a thrift store and carefully ripping out the label and sewing into other acceptable clothes?
Or, as my dear friend does, take her to a Plato's Closet store if you have one near you. She can buy the stuff for a fraction of the cost.
BTW I so remember Gloria Vanderbilt jeans as being the hot item when I was young and dying to get a pair. And at $40 a pair at the time, my mother just let me die.
What I mean about sewing, get her to sew the label. Make her in on the deal. Not to be deceptive, but to realize the label is what's important, then it shouldn't matter what it's sewed to. Like a scarf. Like a cotton draw-string bag.
She is more important than a label. I hope that clicks in for her soon.
Who knows, maybe at the store she'll see something that is more "her" than aeropostale. Maybe wrangler. Maybe Michael Kors at TJ maxx.
Well, God Bless you Belinda, you make motherhood in the upper years look easy.
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