Mother-Daughter Fashion Show

At this stage of the fashion game, my 3 ½-year-old daughter is fairly easy to dress. While this wasn’t necessarily true a few months ago, right now we seem to be going through a blissfully simple phase where I pick out what she’s going to wear in the morning and because she spends most of the morning happily chirping and chatting away, she is too distracted to take a breath to stop and complain about the day’s outfit.

Lucy also tends to compliment me on what I’m wearing, or she wants to wear my watch or use my scented powder or lotion. Perhaps I’ve trained her well, cultivating her fine young tastes or maybe she has already learned that flattery will get you everywhere. Either way, a new study says that my moment as a fashion icon in her eyes is slowly going to fade over the next decade so we can crown a new style-maker: my daughter.

According to an article by Time.com, when researchers at Temple University surveyed about 350 mother-daughter pairs with average ages of 44 and 16 to evaluate their buying patterns, they found that it was the moms who were picking up on their daughter’s fashion choices and making them their own. Meanwhile, the teen daughters turned away from their mothers’ wardrobes and chose instead to take their inspiration from celebrities as they tried to establish a more sophisticated, grown-up look for themselves.

The Time story points out that maybe it’s not so much that the mothers are emulating their daughters (and the creepy photo of Dina and Lindsay Lohan that accompanies the story makes me really want to say it ain’t so) and more that no woman wants to feel old and dowdy and frumpy, hence shopping at youthful stores where we probably have no right to be.

Whatever the case, I am pretty sure neither of us will be mimicking the other’s style 100 percent of the time at any point in the near future, if for no other reasons than practical ones. Bright pink Sleeping Beauty t-shirts have no place in a professional setting, just as my blouses and pants would never survive an afternoon nap or a romp on the playground.