I have a wonderful teenage daughter who insists on wearing clothes from thrift stores, and she wears mostly T-shirts and shorts or sweat/lounge pants. But she is on the verge of adulthood, and sometimes, like special occasions, thrift won’t cut it. How can I help move the needle in her wardrobe? — Queenie, Old Saybrook, Conn.
The first thing you have to ask yourself when it comes to what could be called the “fashion gap” (like generation gap, but make it about the wardrobe) is whether your discomfort is really about your child making inappropriate clothing choices, or about your own prejudices and preconceptions.
We all bring our own sense of “appropriate” to our judgments about dress, and those senses are formed by the social and cultural stereotypes in which we came of age. Your reality is not necessarily your child’s reality, and understanding that is crucial to understanding how she is dressing. In fact, in a post-pandemic world where working from home and casual everyday clothing are the norm, a more relaxed kind of dressing has become the default.
This means that before you even get into what your daughter is wearing, you have to understand why she’s wearing it — which means engaging with the question with empathy and curiosity, not judgment and disapproval. As any daughter who has had screaming matches with her mother about clothing can attest, nothing makes you want to dig in and cling to your ratty old stuff more than an adult telling you that it’s ratty old stuff.
For instance, is your daughter thrifting because she feels passionately about sustainability and knows that the single easiest action anyone can take to mitigate fashion’s impact on the planet is to keep clothes in circulation longer (i.e., buy secondhand)?
Is her choice a financial decision, because she is at a stage of her life when she is literally trying on different identities and doesn’t want to invest in one until she’s sure it’s right?
Is her stance political, because she hates the elitism that fashion brands represent? Is it about fitting in with her peer group? Is it about comfort? Is it some combination of all of the above?
Once you have a sense of why she likes her current wardrobe, try to probe a little deeper. (And yes, I know you may just hear “because I like them.”) You can meet her where she is with constructive suggestions. The point is not to change her — she needs to figure out who she is and how that looks, whether you like it or not — but to help her feel like the most confident, happy version of herself.
So, for example, if thrifting is very important to her, you could explore resale sites like the RealReal, Vestiaire and ThredUp together. If it’s comfort she responds to, consider looking for secondhand silk pajama sets, which would satisfy both your desire for a bit of upgraded elegance and her desire for relaxed, easy dressing.
T-shirts come in a variety of fabrics and with lace or embellished details that make them fit for dressy occasions. Even plain button-up shirts, in a gauzy material and layered over a tank top, add a touch of dressy softness.
If it’s self-consciousness that keeps her dressed down, stay with neutral colors — black, beige, navy — but in soft materials like Supima cotton, merino wool or gauze. And look for well-made details that will help a garment last. Nonconstricting does not have to mean shapeless.
The goal should not be to impose your ideas on her, but to help her explore and expand her own ideas.
If all this fails, I will pass on one of the best pieces of parent fashion advice I ever received, delivered by my mother (who learned it the hard way) when my children were asserting their own taste: “If it’s not permanent, don’t worry about it.”
Your Style Questions, Answered
Every week on Open Thread, Vanessa will answer a reader’s fashion-related question, which you can send to her anytime via email or Twitter. Questions are edited and condensed.
