Small Clothes, Big Price Tag: Luxury Kidswear Is Taking Off

Back in 2013, a new fashion week joined the international roster. Global Kids Fashion Week launched for the first time, presenting designer A/W 2013 collections in London. Tiny models took to the runway wearing Kenzo, Little Marc Jacobs, Marni, Chloé, Oscar de la Renta, and Junior Gaultier.

The luxury childrenswear market, which had been slowly smouldering for some time, exploded. Junior fashion shows Pitti Bimbo, Petite Parade and KID are just a few of the shows that followed GKFW.

In 2015, the year that two-year-old North West made her front-row debut at Balenciaga AW15, the global kidswear market was valued at $175.1 billion. By 2018, it was estimated to be $218.2 billion. And by 2023, the market is expected to be worth $308.6 billion—for reference, that’s more than the 2019 GDP of New Zealand.

West, now seven, is one of the most famous children in the world. Her ultra-famous parents, Kim Kardashian and Kanye West have had her in front of cameras almost since the day she was born, usually clad in custom designer gear from the likes of Balmain, Givenchy, Margiela, Alexander Wang and Lanvin. And, just like her influencer mother, West’s style is religiously imitated by (miniature) fans around the world.

Luxury brands have been cashing in on the value of the market for some time. Burberry released their children’s line in 2002; Marc Jacobs started Little Marc Jacobs in 2005; Chloe launched its eponymous junior line in 2007; and Stella McCartney followed in 2010. Lanvin, Marni, Gucci, Versace Young, Oscar de la Renta, Fendi Kids and Dolce & Gabbana now all have dedicated kidswear lines.

And sales are hot. In 2011, Gucci opened its first stand-alone children’s store on Fifth Avenue, New York. In 2013, Net-a-Porter registered the Petite-a-Porter domain name and Mytheresa added their children’s arm in 2018. By 2014, Burberry’s kidswear range was worth $117.5 million, and it’s not an outlier.

Since we can probably safely assume that most children (young Ms West notwithstanding) aren’t particularly bothered by whether they’re wearing Burberry or Bonds, the expansion of the market can probably be attributed to other forces.

One of the strongest forces is the cult of celebrity, and our increased access to celebrities’ lives—particularly their family lives. Prolific Instagrammer Kardashian has plastered West (in all her designer glory) all over her public Instagram account; Victoria and David Beckham’s youngest child, Harper, nine, is known as a mini style icon, and is often snapped out and about dressed just as well as her fashion designer mum; Suri Cruise, now fourteen, was such a child fashionista that she sparked a Tumbler dedicated to her imagined reaction to other famous children’s inferior style; and Prince George made GQ’s Best Dressed Man in Britain list, coming in at number forty-nine, despite only being a toddler at the time.

We can also point to our picture-perfect lives on Instagram. Getting the perfect shot in the right outfit naturally includes our offspring, who need to be dressed appropriately in designer, if not matching, fashion. “Young parents with kids don’t want to sacrifice their own aesthetic choices for the sake of dressing their children,” noted Jeremy Scott, creative director of Moschino, which has its own Moschino Kids line.

As an example, the hashtag #burberrykids has more than 113,000 posts and features infants, toddlers and children dressed to the nines in expensive designer gear. The odd photo includes a well-dressed mother but for the most part, it’s just tots (or flat lays) in head-to-toe luxury wear.

Another is the increased trend of people having children later in life, and therefore often having a higher disposable income to spend on their children. Besides, well-off baby boomers are now grandparents and are happy to drop cash on treating their grandchildren to the best they can get.

An extension of this is the rapidly growing middle classes in huge economies such as China and India, where the luxury kidswear market is growing faster than luxury men’s and womenswear. In China, particularly, the end of the one-child policy in 2015 completely changed the niche market—in 2018, the value doubled within twelve months.

For aspiring mini-me fashionistas, the sky’s the limit—and it’s only getting higher.

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