Mouthman hoodies. Awesome.
Awesome.
AweSOME!
Surely you need to get one for your little carnivore. (I'm imagining a line of prey shirts and I guess they'd look normal and then when the child crossed his arms the springbok or whatever would go all wide-eyed with panic, but I dunno, it's just not as cool.) I want the raptor.
I'm not sure I'd even be running the Maclaren recall story at this point if I didn't happen to have this picture of JennL's William post-tragic amputation, but I do. Surely, though, everyone who needs to know that the famously well-designed, attractive, and sturdy British umbrella strollers can AMPUTATE THE FINGERTIPS OF SMALL CHIILDREN probably does know already. Not that we would have minded knowing this before ours actually did attempt to AMPUTATE OUR SON'S FINGERTIP that time last summer. We assumed user error, not international children's lifestyle brand conspiracy of silence.
So far they are reporting all of eleven incidents, which I suppose might be twelve incidents if it had occured to us to report ours. We didn't, and actually it's a bit hard to figure out if ours would count-- the articles implicate a "folding mechanism" and seem to imply that the children stuck their fingers into the hinge while a parent folded the famously foldable stroller. Ours occured while Kenton was snapping it open for Avi, who was in a bad mood (which did not improve after his AMPUTATION) and didn't feel like walking. This actually seems like a likelier accident (Avi was eager to get into the stroller and reached out for it while it was still being readied for him) but nobody seems to be talking about any deadly unfolding mechanism slicing children to ribbons. We will get the hinge-cover kit, of course, now that we know.
In the meantime, if you are foolhardy enough to continue to use your Maclaren without the patch kit you may want to grab one of those hooks out of the post-Halloween mark-down bins. Just in case. Arrrrrr.
Four years ago this winter, both pregnant with our now-preschoolers, Marya and I sat at a friend's wedding admiring the bride (she was fairytale beautiful), the surroundings, the food, and a teensy exquisite Russian table-mate, all bird-bones and eyelashes, in a midnight-blue dress. We liked our neighbors fine but I couldn't wait for them to get up to dance so I could wave my arm in the air and go "Ooh, ooh, I know this one! I know this one!" about the dress. It was Stella McCartney for H&M, a fragile scrap of lapis silk with platinum ribbons, that made the wearer look like a slightly louche ballerina dining late (in Paris) with the Crown Prince. And who wouldn't want to look like that, at least once in a while?
I wanted that dress. It had no room in it for bosoms, let alone extra people, so that was not going to happen, but I did rush down to H&M on my return hoping to see the rest of the collection, which had been entirely consumed except for a tarnished-silver chain-mail evening bag I am still kicking myself for not buying.
There's no question that Stella McCartney can make beautiful clothes, although she has outfitted too many starlets in shiny studded jumpsuits to get a 100% Andrea approval rating. It's entirely possible that she could have gotten this famous without the name, unlike, say, her mother, the world's most adequate keyboard player. None of this entirely explains, though, why she should have her name on a line of fairly drab, fairly expensive kid's clothes at The Gap. I'm trying to figure out if these will sell, and admitting that I really have no idea. Would you buy:
$38.00 "bloomer shorts," presumably meant to be worn over thick tights with boots or clunky mary janes, the way Chloë Sevigny or the girl who made your latte would?
(Answer: no.)
How about this half-a-trench, half-a-pea-coat?
(Answer: If I needed it, very possibly. It's way stylish.)
This $24.00 tee-shirt?
(Answer, sure, off the 1/2 price rack next month.)
These jeans?
(Answer: Perhaps, but only for, say, a willowy and very fashion-conscious 9-year-old. They would look ridiculous on a tot. They look meant more for Stella's usual young-Hollywood or young-Hollywood-wannabe clientele, and not for anyone who will be trying to climb a jungle-gym in them.)
And finally, this, the signature piece which appears in every ad and on every splash-page but, oddly, does not seem to be availible for purchase on the Gap site:
(Answer: not on your life. It is both too on-trend (I think Padma was wearing this jacket last week on Top Chef) and too specifically Stella McCartney for Gap. I would definitely get it, though, if I wanted my kid to look half fashion victim, half organ grinder's monkey.
And if that last look is your heart's desire, you can always just get one of these from any costume shop for $14.99. And now if you see Chloë Sevigny out dressed as an organ grinder's monkey, you'll know where she got the hat.
I hope to pull together a Halloween round-up but in the meantime, a question:
What the hell is this?
It's called "Horse Rita" which is helpful, since I'm not sure I'd ever have guessed. I thought it was a Bactrian camel. Anyway, it looks abashed and a bit abject. It hopes you won't beat it.
The company, which is called Esthex (i'd expect to see this name attached to something like a blackhead extractor, but what do I know, maybe it's the founder's actually name: Oleg Esthex, of the Central Transdanubian Esthexes) makes many products seemingly born for a life of exile on The Island of Misfit toys, iincluding the puzzlingly named "Cat Door":
That's what it says: "Cat Door." If that thing above is Rita the horse, then this is, I suppose, Door the cat, but why? Is their dog called "Leash?" Why is Rita there not called Stall, or Shit, or some other random noun occasionally associated with the word "horse?" There's just something about calling a cat "Door" that seems directly translated from the Toddler (2-year-olds are forever naming their loveys things like "Sponge" or "Balloon" or "Velcro") or possibly, via Babel Fish, from the Betelguesian. That thing just does not have any of the markers that constitute "cute" on this planet. Nor does it have any but the most rudimentary vestigial ears or tail, so its chances of reading as "cat" are pretty slim. I think it vaguely resembles a four-legged arachnid, or possibly one of the probably miss-reconstructed beasts from the Burgess Shale.
Perhaps the indie-born trend toward "quirky" stuffed animals, which began at places like Etsy (which means the worst examples should be showing up at Regretsy) before taking off for the big time in the jolie-laide persons of the Ugly Dolls, should be running its course by now. Critters meant for kids have gone from quirky to just plain ugly to frankly alarming. I'm all for nontraditional standards of beauty, but that thing isn't nontraditional, it's just wrong.
I've received a couple of announcements lately for Kids Ink clothes on sale and I just don't know, let's take a look.
The faux Chanel is kind of witty, if terrifyingly WASPy:
But most of it looks like this, with a (sixty dollar) high/low East Village graffiti/tattoo art thing sort of vibe:
Or this: or this:
All of which I'm filing under "good design/trying too hard." How many toddlers of your aquaintance are big Basquiat fans, or really miss The Sex Pistols? These go way beyond putting your kid in a CBGB onesie so people know you know what CBGB was. These are downright pretentious. And why stop at Warhol? Wouldn't Jeff Koons make a good t-shirt? Why not Damien Hirst? Kids love sharks.
I do love this one:
but I just don't think I can send these guys my money. My kids are still too young to make me feel uncool by comparison. I'd like to keep it that way until they're at least, I dunno. four?
I've written before, approvingly, of haute-hipster parents who allow their kids to wear normal cute kid stuff, but I'm not sure I'd ever encountered their opposite number, the normal-looking parents with fully tricked-out haute-toddler todder, until yesterday at the farmer's market.
To be honest, I don't remember what the parents were wearing or sporting, I was too dazzled by their daughter, who was wearing, I think, Tea Collection (no, not this dress, I just posted it because I covet it, although for daughter or self I'm frankly not sure):
And carrying this:
And riding this (in red):
Oh, and she was also wearing glasses. I think they were Miklis:
When I tell people what I blog about I usually find myself instantly assuring them, over-eagerly and probably unnecessarily (they don't care!) that GGYJ isn't one of those kid-stuff shopping blogs, you know the ones. It's, um, a different kind. We talk about how we feel about children's products, what needs particular products seem to set out to fulfill, how things used to be and where they are going... you know. It's not just about buying things. And it's often, specifically, about not buying things.
Tomorrow is Back To School, or, in my kids' case(s), To School, since they've never been. If I dwell too long on the fleetingness of youth and the fact that they will never again start preschool, and from here on out it's just a headlong rush through kindergarten and puberty and then I'll have high schoolers who are practically grown-ups and then I'll have grown-ups and... well, If I were to dwell on all that I woldn't produce anything you'd want to read. And my screen would get all blurry. So, let us dwell on Dwell instead.
I found this child's ride-on vacuum on this guy's list of the stupidest kid products, some of which he's right about (the infamous One Step Ahead crawler's helmet, Little Emperor nursery funiture), some of which are just novelty items nobody takes seriously, and one of which he is totally wrong about (remember I have toddler twins): the leash. I do agree with his general thesis, though: almost everything they try to sell you for your baby is useless or crap, or both.
The Buster vacuum does not, in fact, exist; it's just a design student's thesis project, and hardly deserved inclusion on anyone's "idiot" list, but what if someone did chose to put him into production? I probably couldn't afford him, but I love him! The design, with its kid-friendly space-froggy "face," is darling, little kids love to ride, and little kids kids love to clean, although some, to be fair, burst into tears when you plug in a vacuum cleaner (although mostly, that's cats). Most come running, wanting to help. Sure, they'd probably help by vacuuming up the contents of the dog's bowl and your wallet, but they'd mean well, and learn valuable lessons about, um, not doing that.
Meanwhile, waiting for Buster (the name, while probably actionable, is kind of genius), you can get this guy on the left there, a table-top RhoombaD2 kind of thing which sucks up pencil shavings and bits of crayon. He's OK. He'd probably break immediately, though, and design-wise, he's no Buster.
What's startling about Loyal Army:
