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The Price Of High Fashion

Babies never fail to invoke deep feelings of love and tenderness, especially among advertisers, for whom the prospect of taking your money warms the heart like a cup of steaming cocoa prepared by faceless servants working quietly and efficiently behind closed doors.

A Homedaddy reading one of the many slick parenting magazines may initially feel left out by the unmistakably feminine orientation of the color scheme, the selection of typefaces, and especially the advertising. This must be what women baseball fans feel like between innings as they suffer through one stud-fantasy razor blade commercial after another.

The new-parent market, which is really the new-mother market, is such a gold mine that clothing giant The Gap has created a separate entity called baby Gap which seems to be single-handedly funding most of these magazines with their muti-page advertising spreads.

I can tell right away that I am not the target audience. Leafing through page after page of focus group-approved pastel color combintions, I can almost hear the bullets of market research whizz and ricochet off towards another demographic. An innocent bystander, I proceed with caution.

Wandering through the soft-sell landscapes, I marvel at the various offerings. Cashmere pants, $75. Mohair cardigan, $58, with optional mohair "shell," $48. Something called a cashmere "shrug" for $78 that looks like the top half of a sweater. You've got to be kidding. You want me to put $75 cashmere pants on a creature whose defining feature is a total lack of bowel control? Even if constant vigilance keeps the garment from becoming a dry cleaner's nightmare, the child's growth rate will render it obsolete within six weeks.

I have nothing against the baby Gap line of clothing, or against fancy baby clothes in general. Emma is as cute as, well, as a baby model in a yuppie parenting magazine in her baby Gap duds, which we find in our local thrift stores for about 79 cents a pop. I get the dual satisfaction of supporting a good cause and still being a cheapskate. Emma gets to be a fashion plate, and I can take a philosophical view when she decorates her "silk resort capri pants" with marker pens.

I do not recommend that everyone get their baby clothes at thrift stores. Someone has to buy them new in order to feed my supply line. Besides, only strong retail sales can support the magazine layouts, which allow me to see the actual retail prices ð not just so I can feel smart and superior, but also because it helps me figure out how much to deduct as charity when I donate them back again after Emma outgrows them.

I needn't worry; connoisseurs of "retail therapy" will continue to insist on the real thing. Thrift stores fail to deliver that special euphoria of spending, described by some as an "out-of-money experience." It is a brief but intense high that gives way to an inevitable crash, during which the shopper is suddenly able to comprehend the difference between the advertised image and the actual piece of merchandise. That's probably why they call it the Gap.

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© Todd Pinsky 1998-2002. All rights reserved.