Tweens and young teens often seem to be in a perpetual cycle of trying on new iterations of themselves — one day they are obsessed with Sol de Janiero body spray and pastel Lululemon belt bags and the next it’s all about Brandy tank tops and baggy Edikted jeans. The fanny packs are flung to the giveaway pile. (As an 11-year-old named Stella memorably told the Cut the other week, “in sixth grade, everybody walks in with their Lululemon and their Stanleys and then once you get into seventh grade, you are done with that.”)
And yet, if you look around at a crew of Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha girls who’ve recently gotten dressed up for a school dance, it can be like staring at carbon copies. Their go-to party outfit has been immutable over the last few years: a tiny, tight dress and enormous, logo-emblazoned sneakers.
The dresses are strapless or have spaghetti straps and can be black, gray, pink, shimmery, ruched, or satiny. The fabric spans from the armpits to the bottom of the butt. The sneakers appear to be fresh from the box or reserved only for special occasions. Nike, New Balance, Golden Goose, and select Converse styles are the only options. It is absolutely essential to get the look just right.
I know about this because I’m raising two daughters in Brooklyn and because I interviewed about a dozen moms and their kids from throughout the tristate area to confirm that the partygoer aesthetic I’ve observed at special occasions — from bat mitzvahs to spring formals to quinceañeras — is what they’re seeing too. My kids and their friends never “twin” at school the way they do at a semi-formal event. One mom of a tween, Marie from Brooklyn, told me that “the look” has gone national: “When I see pics from friends’ events, no matter where in the country, they all look the same,” she says.
Tweens can’t quite put their finger on the draw of this ensemble, which seems to have its roots in the late 2010s, just before the pandemic. “I don’t know — I guess I think too much fabric and flouncy stuff looks babyish maybe?” says Nina, an eighth-grader in Brooklyn who has three tube dresses she rotates for parties. “It’s just what everyone is wearing. It’s just a cute look. And I didn’t want to stand out in any real way — I’m not trying to look different than my friends.” Amelia, a seventh-grader in Connecticut, finds that her small, stretchy dresses (her favorite is this one from Lucy in the Sky) are “just really easy to dance in. And I can adjust the halter so it makes my push-up bra look good.”
“You just want to look pretty and have your hair look really nice, but it’s not about having the most ‘stand-out’ dress,” says Nina, who admits that each of her three black minidresses—all from the brand KatieJnyc— look almost identical. “My mom just sat there in the dressing room at Bloomingdale’s and was like, ‘Ugh, why am I buying three of the exact same dress?’”
The absurd length of the dresses — well above the upper thigh — is a point of contention for some parents. Still, only a few I interviewed argue about the dresses with their kid. “I don’t love the super-short dresses, but why should girls feel like they have to cover or hide their bodies?” says Leah Bromley, a science teacher and mom of three from New Jersey. However, she also points out that the dresses are not for every body type, and kids who have larger bodies aren’t always able to participate in the look due to a lack of inclusive sizing. “I see girls tugging at them and constantly checking them as though they feel uncomfortable,” says Leah. “I mean, so much is changing in their bodies, and they are being pressured to show that to the world.”
Sarah, a reading specialist in New Jersey, has two teen daughters with a cache of tiny frocks (like these from Lola’s and Princess Polly) that range in price from $40 to $100. “They pull the dresses up so they go even higher on their thighs,” Sarah notes. She isn’t fazed, in part because the look has become so ubiquitous that no one stands out much.
“That’s kind of how I got my mom to come onboard with my dresses,” says Elena, an eighth-grader from Brooklyn. “At first, my mom was horrified by the small dresses I picked out. But then she realized that every single one of us were wearing these same looks, and she didn’t mind anymore.”
Before her seventh-grader attended her first bat mitzvah last year, Alyssa, a mom in Hoboken, sent her daughter some links for what she thought were “cute dresses” on Nordstrom.com. “She texted back something along the lines of ‘Eww.’ Then I asked a friend whose daughter had already gone to several dressy events and she told me, ‘All the girls get their dresses from the brand KatieJNYC.’ I eventually accepted that all the girls were dressing like this and that she was going to be wearing a dress the size of a napkin.”
For shoes, the look requires sneakers, specifically Nikes (Dunks, AF1s, Air Jordans) and the New Balance 550s. It can feel absurd buying these expensive sneakers for a 12-year-old who may only lace them up for a few parties or who could have a growth spurt between now and the next party, but “at least they aren’t a pair of heels that will be worn once or twice and then never again,” says Lauren, a middle-school director in Westchester, adding that the girls treat them like prized possessions and watch YouTube videos on how to clean them. Some kids even buy special crease-guard inserts so that the leather stays pristine and ready for the next event.
All of this uniformity underscores a central tenet of the tween and early teen years: Kids want to fit in and stand out all at the same time. They want no one to notice them unless it’s to comment that their hair or makeup is perfect or that the way they are wearing the tube dress looks extra cute in some imperceptible but totally real way. They want to dance around like hyped-up puppies but look like they just wandered out of a college semi-formal. They want to be effortlessly swept up in a slinky sea of their dressed-up peers, and to be — if not at the top of the pyramid — right there in the scrum of it all, and never on the outside.
A few months ago, I stood at the edge of the dance floor during the evening bat mitzvah celebration for a good friend of my older daughter. I watched as about a dozen flush-faced, cupcake-fed kids jumped up and down, jostling for space within a tight dance circle, scream-singing the lyrics to a song (scrubbed of the explicit lyrics per parent request). Each kid was different in height, build, hairstyle, and ethnicity, but otherwise, they were all the same — like a lightly choreographed cheer squad moving together to a beat that, truthfully, we parents can’t entirely hear. Being a part of that bouncing circle is everything. It’s the whole look.
The names of some parents and kids have been changed to protect their privacy.
The Dresses They Want
There were three brands that I heard mentioned over and over: Lucy in the Sky, KatieJNYC, and Princess Polly.
Amelia, a seventh-grader, told us she likes that this feminine zip-up minidress is “strapless, but it’s not like other ones where it goes low and looks weird.”
Eighth-grader Franny has this dress, which comes in 13 colors (including a classic black and a Barbie-worthy pink). She picked it because it’s “super stretchy,” covered in sequins, and has “a little part where it bunches up at the hip.”
“I like that it’s not totally like other ones,” says Amelia of this spaghetti-strap dress. The differentiating factor: It’s open in the back and comes in what Amelia calls “a pretty red color.”
Available in black and a sweet green floral, this dress has a slightly more bell-shaped skirt than most. “If your parents insist on some sleeves, this one is cute,” says eighth-grader Nina.
The Sneakers They Want
Many of the most coveted color combos sell out fast. Tweens tell me that the moment one style becomes saturated on the dance floor, the next one pops up.
Seventh-grader Victoria says everyone calls these sneakers “Pandas. “They are sort of basic,” she adds. “They go with everything and don’t try too hard.”
“At events in Manhattan, it’s all about these,” says Amelia of this 1989 throwback basketball sneaker, which has been updated with suede and leather details.
These low-profile, striped sneakers are “cute, basic and super comfortable,” says Franny.
“I would love to get these in the Seafoam colorway,” says Nina. “I think they just look really cool in that color and they match everything. But they aren’t easy to find.”
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