Clothing, Products and Services for Children
CASE STUDY: STYLE OF PHOTOGRAPHY
"Following feedback from our customers that the girl models used in our promotional photography looked too grown up and sophisticated, we reviewed and made changes to our internal guidelines for the styling and photography of our childrenswear. These changes included reducing the age of the girl models from 12 years old to 10 years old; moving away from posed studio shots to more fun, lifestyle shots in a natural environment and changing what could be perceived as grown up 'sultry' expressions to happy smiling children."
Source: High street retailer contributing to the Review
21.
As a result, we found that the retailers contributing to the Review are careful to avoid stocking children's garments with suggestive slogans. If an adult fashion trend was seen as sexualised, such as the use of sheer materials or lace, when the trend was translated into children's clothes it is often done through designs that nod towards the adult fashion rather than by simply scaling down the clothes into children's sizes. For example, one retailer translated the adult fashion for lace leggings into opaque leggings with a lacy pattern printed on to them for their children's range. Some respondents to the Call for Evidence thought that retailers had responded in this way because of previous negative publicity.
22.
We have been surprised, however, by how few retailers seem to have formal, structured processes in place for checking or challenging their own design and purchasing decisions or for capturing the views of parents in a systematic way. The majority rely on the taste and experience of their buyers and managers and invoke a company ethos of knowing that they need to focus on what their customers want. We would, however, like to see a more thorough and transparent ‘best practice’ approach to this issue, which retailers can publicly adopt. We believe that this would not only help businesses to avoid selling inappropriate items but also would demonstrate that businesses take parents’ concerns seriously and were taking steps to address them.
Shop window and in-store displays
23.
Some parents have raised concerns about sexualised imagery in window displays, such as displays of lingerie and explicitly sexualised clothing, the use of mannequins posed in sexually suggestive ways, or sexualised photography or images used as the backdrop to a window display. Parents have also been concerned about the display of children's goods alongside adult goods. Most often this concerns girls’ underwear or swimwear (Buckingham,Willett, Bragg and Russell, 2010). Here there is an implied sexualisation
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