To think clothes become chavvy after age 2.

[Piggiesinblankets]

I loved looking for clothes for the children up to 18-24 months. After this, instead of the nice pastels, flowers, bears etc it becomes tracksuit bottoms for boys with slogans or garish patterns. It all looks cheap and nasty. Even a lot of the Next stuff is particularly bad for little boys.

I love the Boden/ Frugi / Blade & Rose stuff but most of that is not an affordable day to day option with 3 under 3 ( Vinted and sale shopping aside).

I like my children to be nicely dressed, not in awful tracksuit type outfits. I don't understand why at least up to 5 they don't have more of the baby / toddler designs. More pretty pinafore and soft colours for girls and dungarees, bears, blues, browns and burnt oranges for boys etc.

Once my children were old enough to have an opinion I'd buy what I think they'd like (as long as weather appropriate etc). When they were little it was usually bright colours, Peppa pig, Thomas, Fireman Sam etc. My eldest is 10 and wears sports wear most of the time as it's comfortable. My youngest is 7 and likes t shirts with sonic, joggers and zip up hoodies.

They'll wear something smarter for a party but day to day they can choose (or if I buy it I go for what I think they'd want to wear). It's them who wears it so why shouldn't they decide their own style?

my experience with blade n rose was that it didn’t wash well and looked cheap after 1-2 wears. Didn’t even bother with fruugi for DD, It all seemed to be bright rainbow type stuff, never has it seamed classy to me. Boden was good but dresses were always massive on DD. M&S do nice, non chavy stuff, so do a lot of places if you put effort in to look around.

I remember being a child and loving a certain cartoon and being absolutely overjoyed to have a t-shirt with that on it. I don't understand people who are vehemently opposed to character clothes and would rather their children wear plain shirts in pastel shades. I mean it's not a big deal either way so you do you but would it really kill you for your child who loves Pokémon to wear a shirt with Pikachu on?

I don't want to dress my small children in pastels and burnt orange. I like bright colours on them.

I don’t have any objection to clothes with characters on in principle it’s just that by definition it massively limits the scope of what children will like.

If your kid is into Peppa Pig or Marvel it’s all good but lots of kids don’t. It’s just needlessly restrictive.

I still found cute clothes for my boy up to age 7/8, found that was the cut off. You just need to shop around more. Now I just keep everything plain and colourful like this https://www.marksandspencer.com/cotton-rich-plain-sweatshirt-2-8-yrs-/p/clp60698116?color=GREEN#intid=pid_pg1pip45g2r8c2%7Cprodflag_3%20for%202

I have never put my boys in jeans/chinos though - to me, I find dressing them like mini adults “chavvy”, if you really want to use that term. I put them in a t-shirt or jumper like above, patterned leggings or dark navy joggers.

DS is 5 and I've found plenty of nice stuff for him in Gap, Zara and H&M. I wait for the sales and stockpile. I've also got nice, plain basics from Primark.

I also stalk the sales and second hand sites for expensive brands like Jacadi, Stella McCartney and Mini Rodini.

I'm not a massive fan of clothes from Next so I just...don't shop there.

I have a DD aged 8 but in 9-10 clothes...now that really is a horror show! She still wants to dress quite 'young', but most things we find wouldn't look out of place in a nightclub. She likes Boden and Monsoon clothing. When she was little we bought a lot from Jojo Maman Bebe.

Exactly. And I really don't like the idea of having an "aesthetic" or colour scheme for little kids - far too much attention on appearances. Cotton, practical and not ridiculously clashing will do me.

I found loads of good stuff in charity shops and at nct second-hand sales.

Try jojo maman Bebe in the next online sale, I’m with you I’m sick of red tractors and orange dinosaurs! How about some mint green? I have a ds with very red hair and lots of bright colours don’t suit him.

Those Liittle Prince London clothes are about the "chavviest" (not a word I like) clothes I've seen for ages! Don't know quite how to explain without sounding judgey (honestly, I'm not). From the people I know who choose this style, I know only certain groups choose to dress in this way. And it's definitely not the posh people.

The posh people dress from Vinted or the dressing up box!

I buy from Boden, Jojo a d Frugi in the sale for my oldest and pass them down. My oldest is a girl and I have big gap so I bought quite a lot from the boy section in case we had a boy next so it could be passed down. Most stuff from the more expensive brands looks newer for much longer.

I do get quite a lot from Next too, I find their range to cover a lot of different tastes even in the older girls range (not so much the older boys). There is more online than in the shops.

John Lewis is good and they have good sales. M&S is nice up to around age 7. I like a lot of supermarket clothes up to age 6 or 7 too, especially Morrisons Nutmeg, they have denim and corduroy pinafores in winter - it's not as good quality and doesn't last as long as the expensive brands though.

I think dungarees are no good during potty training and a for a year or so after till they are very good at getting their own clothes on and off.

I don't mind jogging bottoms and leggings in nice colours and prints.

I think Next online has a lot better selection, the in store stuff can be a bit garish.

I've always hated the look of tracksuit bottoms so I get my son these kind of Chino type trousers but thinner material with an elasticated waist (I've actually never seen them in this country, I buy them in the gulf), cargo pants or linen blend or muslin ones.

Newbie is really good for boys trousers!

This issue then presents itself again after age 8. DD1 is tall and slim, so I buy 7-8 clothing for her (she’s 5). Once she grows out of these, it seems that everything on offer is cropped tops, inappropriate slogans etc.

There’s definitely a gap in the market for affordable clothing for children up to say age 10 that is suitable for actual children, not mini teenagers.

I have mine in brights so I can spot them whizzing around the soft play / park amongst the others also running around … so I purposely buy bright clothes for over 2s 🤣. We also have some lovely clothes ( both girl and boy for over 2s too for the times they need to dressed nicely ! )

Yes I remember that phase being quite hard - from about 8-12 there’s little on the market that’s really suitable in affordable clothing aimed at girls.

I have 2 boys aged 9 and 6 and I thought the same when they were younger. I bought a lot of Frugi which was cute when they were toddlers but as they got older it started to look ridiculous to be honest. We got a couple of comments about their clothes looking like pyjamas.

Like you OP I thought the dark coloured joggers were terribly boring but as my two have got older they are a godsend tbh. Really practical and useful. My 9 year old doesn’t like tight fitting clothes so getting him into anything else other than joggers is not worth the effort - even trying to get him to wear shorts is difficult because they tend to be tighter.

That cream coloured bear jumper linked up thread looks nice but my 9 year old would never wear it because he doesn't like things he has to put over his head (prefers zip up fleeces/hoodies) and my 6 year old would get it stained very quickly.

As children get older they often wear out clothes before outgrowing them and so the need is for practical things, not ones that might be more aesthetically pleasing. Those blade and rose leggings for example - there’s a reason they don’t do them for kids over the age of 5. They look cute on a crawling baby and don’t need to be hard wearing because 1 year olds don’t tend to be kicking footballs round a park or taking part in “knee sliding contests” 😂🙄 with their friends in the school playground. I can’t imagine a pair of those leggings lasting long with my 6 year old.

I do buy the occasional brightly coloured frugi tshirt in the sales etc but again, as the boys get older they choose their own clothes in the morning and they don’t tend to reach for them. My 9yo’s favourite T-shirts are a set from Asda in plain grey or beige. Which is fair tbh. As a kid I never wanted to wear dresses or skirts and resented my dad wanting me to “dress like a girl”. I don’t see how forcing kids to wear stuff that you like is any different from that.

That being said I do think there is a trend towards getting kids to grow up quickly and this does extend to clothes. a pp mentioned that girls clothes tend to be crop tops etc - I have noticed that some boys clothes don’t seem to be age appropriate. Like I saw Sainsbury’s was selling an awful auntie tshirt a few months ago but only in toddler sizes. This doesn’t make sense to me because the David walliams books are aimed for my 9yo’s age range, not toddlers.

Asda is great for children's clothes. A wide variety from the garish to more muted. Good quality and the sizing seems correct. Better than Sainsbury's, h and m or marks.

3-4

Yeah see mine are a bit older. Not watching TV won't last, and in time they'll have friends with characters on t-shirts that they think are crazy cool.

As long as they fit, made of cotton and are clean I don't really care if my DDs t-shirts have a car, a flower or Spidey on them. The only thing I don't like is gendered "be kind" type slogans.

I love boys clothes. I don't really like muted colours and love a dinosaur print so maybe I'm the type of parent the next clothing is aimed at. I do love lots of the stuff from the white comany. Mainly because mine is so little and they seem to keep the style babyish for larger sizes.

As for the joggers, what are you taking your DC to the park in? I thought joggers would be ideal for messy days, I wouldn't put on my nice trousers to do this and I'm definitely not a chav.

This is so off topic sorry but I've got a slim 3 year old with no waist to speak of - where do you get the leggings? The joggers issue is such a pain but I'm struggling to find leggings for boys in his size!

I buy a lot of ribbed leggings from Sainsbury's, they seem to stay up well for us! Like these, we've got them in various colours. They're pretty much all my son wears to nursery.