Media

School clothings: Four differing visions of girls’ fall fashions

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School bells are starting to ring, and clothing stores hope cash registers will do the same. To get a jump on the fashion trend for this back-to-school shopping season, check out these magazines.

Seventeen’s fall fashions scream teen, including lots of cheap and tacky clothes that could only look good on an adorable young person. We enjoyed the fun piece about “fanicures,” or manicures that show off your school team’s colors. Tricks include alphabet nail decals to spell out your team’s name, topped with clear polish. Seventeen’s pitch on fragrances also gave off a young vibe with emoticons to illustrate which perfumes are “sassy” or “playful.” TeenVogue’s perfume page, by contrast, looked like it could have been pulled from any fashion mag.

Girl’s Life also proves its teen cred in the fall issue with a cover of Taylor Swift and a lively and hip fall fashion spread. We especially love the mag’s fun tips for girls about going back to school. “Kick off the year right by speaking up, standing out and finally going after what you want,” the mags says in one article advising girls on how to achieve what they want at school. It’s about time mags talked to girls about speaking up rather than just looking pretty. GL also provides fun but sound advice about boys with an alphabetical guide to all the advice a girl might need to talk to their crush. “H” stands for “heartbroken,” the mag says. “If your dude has been recently dumped, it’s probably a bad time to present yourself as his girl in shining armor,” it says.

American Girl is perfect for the little girls who don’t need fashion so much as to remember how to enjoy the last days of summer. AG’s August issue replaces talk of clothes and boys for pictures of ice cream sandwiches and frozen lemonades. Little girls will love the coloring pages and the story of Michelle’s camping trip with her dad. TeenVogue could learn a thing or two from AG magazine, which talks to girls like people with varied interests rather than skinny clothes racks.

The biggest problem with TeenVogue’s back-to-school issue is that it’s too much like big-people’s Vogue. In other words, it’s not much fun.

Teen fashion should be quirky and not overly sexy, especially when it comes to school clothing. Yet TeenVogue Editor-in-Chief Amy Astley seems to want teens to look like little adults, adorned in clothing that’s more appropriate for the runway than school, and at prices that few teens should be able to afford. What teen is going to fork over $341 for a fuzzy stole that looks like someone skinned Elmo? Also off-putting is that Astley saw fit to display model Kendall Jenner from head to toe in leopard print like some 40-year-old cougar from an episode of the “Real Housewives of Long Island.”

Time gives its cover and one-quarter of its current issue over to Robin Williams’ suicide, knocking Mideast troubles to the sidebars. The mag doesn’t address whether the actor was using drugs or had financial problems — but hints that his problems stemmed from neglect as a child of upper-middle class WASPs. The most insight comes from the man himself in outtakes from a 2011 Time interview. When asked if addiction is the price of fame, Williams hints at enablers. “Most of the time with drugs, if you’re famous, they give them to you.”

Elsewhere, militants are committing genocide and innocent people are dying by the thousands. The US, and Time, have rediscovered a new strategic friend in the Kurds, a stateless mountain people who are helping combat the world’s most frightening threat: the Islamic extremists of ISIS.

Reading “Seeds of Doubt” in the New Yorker , we were reminded of that magazine’s role in creating the modern environmental movement more than 50 years ago when it published excerpts from Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring.” Its stirring defense of genetically modified crops, or GMOs, may come to a surprise to loyal readers (who no doubt eat organic). The article criticizes the leader of the anti-GMO movement, Indian scientist Vandana Shiva, for being more mystic than scientific and seems to believe if Monsanto had only changed its name, it would not be under constant attack. Cause and effect is hard to prove for anything that takes decades to manifest itself — something The New Yorker neglects to mention.