When did you learn about fashion/grooming etc.?

[Bleh]

I was reading this article about teenage girls and their parents' allowances for dressing. The school I went to was incredibly strict around uniforms - absolutely no make-up, skirts down to your knees (though we did roll them up), hair tied back etc. Then, my DM was very strict about clothing (and isn't very into clothes, is rather anti-fashion) so basically, until I left home I was rather clueless about dressing, doing make-up and so on.

I think now that actually, dressing like a lunatic with tons of badly done make-up is not such a bad thing to do, as a teenager. It's a time when you get to experiment with clothes etc., make mistakes, and learn things.

views?

I completely agree, my DM was very similar when I was young. I remember trying to put make up on seriously for the first time when I was about 12/13 and she called me a tart and made me take it off. I also took on the message from her that it was somehow wrong, or at least frivolous, to care about clothes/fashion/appearance and as a result I am only now trying to figure it all out (am 30!).

Thing is, I have always loved clothes/fashion etc., which she just didn't get. When I was in kindergarten, my report always said "Bleh does not play with the puzzles, but can normally be found dressed in ten layers of the dressing up clothes". My favourite book was "The women we wanted to look like" by Brigid Keenan.

In that article though, I do think that the one mother has let it go too far - having her teenage daughter using a Prada handbag for school! That's wrong. She totally doesn't appreciate it. She should give it to me instead .

I can relate to your experience, though in my case it was my Dad who was the restrictive one (our family is very patriarchal).

As a result, I felt I was playing catch-up during my twenties. Now that I'm in my thirties and have just a little more 'fun' money I'm like a kid in a sweetshop at cosmetic counters, and I still don't know what to do with a lot of it.

It's the same story with clothes shopping and I feel that to a large extent I've missed the boat with dressing in slightly more 'out there' stuff. Easier to pull off in your teens and twenties, than thirties.

I've always felt that if I've had the freedom to experiment when I was just pre-teens and a teenager, I'd have a lot more confidence in my image now and a better feel for what does and doesn't work on me.

I grew up in the middle of nowhere and it was a mixture of private school uniform - tie and navy ribbons etc plus bad bad fashion, Country Road and Esprit.

We wore things like blazer jackets and bad jeans. Bad sloaney stuff gone country.

I learnt ALOT about fashion at 18 at university - experimental stuff etc- and then through 20s and 30s. Feel good again as can buy really lovely clothes.

My only bugbear is that I didn't buy the on-sale Azzedine Alaïa dress I tried on at 23. Should have been more courageous.

23 is the right age for adventurous and dammit I looked great back then and had more parties to go to.

Not that I wore loads of designery gear back then. It was mostly second hand and grungy, with a few v expensive bits. But this one dress was really good.

I was 20 (!) and at university before I experimented with make-up. I was a very nerdy, a-grade type person at school, although I did have my own clothes style (kind of gothy/hippy). But I just didn't know how make-up worked and how to use - no one told me. My rebellious sister went out plastered in it and looked a fright so I just rejected it, and my mum just used old lady lipstick (though she wasn't that old) and never discussed it with me.

Tragic really because I had hideous spots as a teenager and didn't even know there were products out there that could cover them up! Also that you could have lip gloss/colour that wasn't inch-thick creamy coral like my mum's. I remember I first learned all this at the good old Body Shop in Oxford - they must have thought I was so clueless, but they were lovely to me.

my mum and I both loved shopping and makeup

she and I used to spend loads of time looking at mags together

dd and I are also really into clothes and makeup

we like nothing better than a day out shopping together and playing with makeup

I taught her how to do makeup properly and how to take care of her skin
specifically so she wouldn't go out looking tartish with cake face on

think I was about 14/15 when I first started to show an interest

same as dd

Oh yes me too ggirl.

When my parents come to UK from other side of world we go to Liberty together and we all buy stuff.

Mum loves it.

Ahh the bliss.

I love buying nice clothes for ds, (and sometimes think of a future dd to buy clothes with.)