Piccalilly clothing have asked me to guest post for them. Pretty exciting as I’ve never produced a guest post before. They wanted someone to write about unisex clothing. This is a subject that I have been meaning to write about for sometime as having a boy and a girl it has become something that at times has really frustrated me.
I admit that I do love a dress. I suppose after boys clothes shopping for 8 years it’s a nice change to look at all the lovely girls clothes or is it simply that girls clothes are better than boys? Should it not be that girls and boys clothes all come under the same section. Thankfully this is changing.
How different it was in the early 1900s, when blue was for girls and pink for boys.
I found this quote from DressMaker magazine. “The preferred colour to dress young boys in is pink. Blue is reserved for girls as it is considered paler, and the more dainty of the two colours, and pink is thought to be stronger (akin to red).”The Women’s Journal explained it thus: “That pink being a more decided and stronger colour, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.
I am not sure when the change happened and the obsession with girls in pink and boys in blue started but thankfully the days of walking into a children’s clothes shop and being faced with rails of pink clothes for girls and blue clothes for boys are fading.
More and more retailers, both high street and independent, are making clothes available to every child, whatever their gender. Companies like Piccalilly have taken steps to make this easier for us all to choose by getting rid of the boy and girl selection option. You simply choose what clothes you like not what should be for a particular gender. They recently announced a new structure to there ‘Baby & Toddler’ section which removed the gender from the main category structure to enable you to shop all the ranges without having to move between girls, boys and unisex, many of which were duplicated.
The other thing I have noticed is the difference in quality. This is going to sound crazy but on many occasion I have noticed boys clothes often feel different to girls clothes. Boys clothes often feel thicker, better quality than girls. It’s as if manufacturers feel that boys clothes need to be more robust. Girls clothes can feel thin and often shrink and become more tired than boys clothes. Shopping in the winter can leave me asking, don’t girls get cold? Don’t even get me started on swimming costumes for girls. I was horrified recently when looking at costumes for my two year old. Why on early would by daughter at two years of age want a costume with splits down the sides?! Thankfully all of the clothes I have purchased from Piccalilly have been thick and beautifully made. All the clothes are organic making them super soft and super strong. The way my children wear them, they need to be tough and comfortable. They are to feral to put up with tight fitting clothing.
I wonder how much pushing children in a particular way of dress effects how they feel later in life. How much does it effect the person they become. If I dress my daughter like a Tom boy (a term I can’t stand) does that make her less feminine in the future?! Of course it does not. It just means she learns to drive a tractor in a frock!
Gender-free clothing is breaking down boundaries put in place by society that suggest girls want all flowers and bows and boys want cars and dinosaurs, and proving that kids should just dress like kids. At the end of the day if a child finds clothes they are comfortable in and enjoy wearing then that’s all that matters, if they like it, let them wear it!
Ahh this is fab and I couldn’t agree more. I’ve never been bothered about what my clothes are like and my eldest daughter is the same. My younger daughter is all about the pink and the dresses though which is definitely nothing to do with anyone in the family!
Nat.x
She is obviously rebelling against you 😉 X