Fashion Is Not A Luxury

My daughter's t-shirt tells me so. Courtesy of Sarah Jessica Parker's clothing line "Bitten."

My daughter is about to take a big juicy bite out of my wallet, and girlfriend has her own ideas about style too.

The general rule is: The more embellishment, embroidery, frills, jewels, beads, sequins, bits of off-pattern fabric, appliques and art work the better.

And this year, since we are bent on attracting the attention of a certain artfully disheveled blond sixth grade heartthrob, we are maniacal about the cut, fit and appearance of pants, jeans, skirts and leggings - and have every intention of amassing a shoe collection that would impress Imelda Marcos.

So armloads of jazzy and bejeweled tops, and a dozen or so pants, jeans, leggings and skirts, and about two hours later, she is attempting to fleece me out of suede ankle boots, Ugg-style boots in an outrageous and impractical color, athletic shoes for gym, painted and bedazzled Chuck Taylors that will never touch the gym floor, metallic ballet flats, clogs (since flip flops are banned and we must have some type of slip on!) and fuzzy slippers just for fun.

And of course we must replenish socks, panties, training bras and pajamas that are somehow suddenly in dwindling supply.

I am going to start underfeeding her so she does not grow out of all of this stuff before Halloween.

So, bent over double under the weight of all the back to school loot, we leave the department store.

But we've really only covered the wardrobe.

We have not even begun to prepare for landing in the wild and untamed world of accessories.