In the ’90s, 2000s and early 2010s, tween fashion was at its prime. With stores like Justice, Delia’s, Claire’s and Limited Too exploding in popularity, clothing for tweens, children between the ages of eight and twelve, became its own category entirely. Tween fashion typically consisted of bright colors, t-shirts with butterflies or monkeys, platform flip-flops and those multicolored spiky earrings.
Nowadays, however, tween fashion is completely unrecognizable, with tweens trading in side-ponies and butterfly clips for slicked back buns, brightly colored clothing for a muted Lululemon set and drugstore makeup for high-end Sephora makeup. Tweens have begun to look and act like teens and young adults, which may seem like just a shift in trends on the surface, but is indicative of a larger problem: the tween stage seems to be disappearing altogether.
Clothing stores
One of the reasons for the lack of tween fashion in our modern world is that there are almost no current stores designated to tween fashion. In the ’90s and 2000s, there were four brands that dominated tween fashion: Delia’s, Limited Too, Justice and Claire’s. They were the epitome of tween fashion, and every girl had an item from at least one of these brands.
At their heights, these brands had hundreds of stores, and in Delia’s case, sent out 55 million copies of its catalog annually. These brands, and others like them, are all but gone now, with Limited Too being discontinued in 2008, Justice now being found in Walmart and many, including Justice, Claire’s, Delia’s and Wet Seal, filing for bankruptcy.
A big reason that a lot of these brands failed was that they came at a pivotal time for the retail industry, where the internet forced brands to build an online presence for themselves or risk becoming irrelevant. Looking back at it from our technological standpoint, it sounds so easy, but at that time, barely anyone had done it, so there was really no available guidance for brands and clothing companies. As a result, many clothing brands, not just tween brands, failed to keep up and went under because of this sudden shift in technology.
Tween fashion does technically still exist, but it’s more of a subset of teen fashion. Instead of entire stores being solely dedicated to tweens, stores like Hollister, which make clothes mainly for teens, have added a subsection made for tweens.
This leads to a lot of crossover between clothes made for teens and clothes made for tweens, and many brands are simply just grouping tweens and teens together in their clothes and marketing. The store that a 12-year-old shops at now is the same store that a 17-year-old and 22-year-old are shopping at, leading to tweens dressing and looking much older than they were just a decade ago.
Media
A lack of tween-centered clothing stores certainly contributes to the disappearance of tween fashion, but many people argue that a bigger reason for this change in fashion is the shift in who tweens are influenced by and look to.
In the past decades, many tweens got their fashion inspiration from their peers or from tween media, such as Disney Channel and tween magazines. They drew their style from other tweens who were the same age as them and who were dressing in tween styles.
Nowadays, tweens draw their style from TikTok and social media, namely influencers. These influencers they follow are often a lot older than these tweens, being in their teenage years or even in their 20s or 30s. 12-year-old girls are watching the same influencers as 22-year-old or even 32-year-old women. They’re getting fashion advice and product recommendations from women who are twice their age or older.
This has led to the crossover of tween, teen and adult fashion, because everyone is getting their inspiration from the same influencers and shopping at the same stores. Popular clothing brands for tweens are the same stores that are also frequented by both teens and adults. Most teens these days shop at stores such as Lululemon, H&M and Shein. 57% of teens cite Amazon as their number one favorite e-commerce site, with Nike, Shein, Lululemon and PacSun taking spots two through five.
Additionally, there seems to be a lack of tween-focused media. In the past decades, before social media, tweens would get most of their fashion inspiration from media, mainly TV shows and magazines. This media was specifically made for tweens, showing tweens wearing clothing geared towards their demographic. Tweens had their own media that was about them and their own celebrities who were their age.
There were magazines such as Girls’ World, J14, Teen Vogue, Cosmo Girl and Teen People. There was also Disney Channel, which made shows and movies that depicted tweens and teens, such as “Lizzy McGuire,” “Hannah Montana,” and “High School Musical.” So there was kind of this built-in distinction between adults, teens and tweens, especially between adults and tweens. They were lightyears apart and it was very easy to distinguish tweens from teens and adults.
Tween fashion still exists, sort of. There are certainly trends that are more popular amongst young people, and these trends are distinct. They’re recognizable to a certain age group at a certain time. But for the most part, the items that make up those trends are coming from a lot of the same stores that teens and adults are shopping at.
While this change in tween fashion may simply seem like just a change in trends, as mentioned before, it is indicative of a larger issue, that tween culture, and the important transition phase between childhood and teenage years, is disappearing.