Recently my younger daughter, age 16, shared with her mother the following revelation. “I need new sneakers,’’ she said, “but not, you know, sneakers.’’
Confronted with this Delphic utterance, my wife, like a character in a Dan Brown novel, sought to penetrate this mystery by showing my daughter a website devoted to sneakers. “How about this one?’’ she helpfully suggested.
“Mesh?!?!?!?’’ replied my daughter, her voice conveying the utter revulsion customarily reserved for villains who commit crimes against humanity. “I hate mesh.’’
As a loyal father, I couldn’t agree more: mesh is despicable. Of course, easy agreement on fashion matters has long been part of my successful strategy to maintain peace by limiting my involvement in my daughter’s fashion choices to a few broad comments—a bland “You look nice’’ that is bereft of details, lest I over-praise or under-praise some particular feature; non-judgmental interrogatories like “Do you know that it’s raining (or freezing, or hailing frogs) out?’’, and firm citings of legal precedent, like “The law forbids you to drive in flip flops’’ or “You will be arrested if you do not wear more clothing than that in public.’’ But sometimes curiosity gets the better of me, and I wonder: why does she wear what she has chosen to wear?
For enlightenment, I turned to an expert, my friend, the author and fashion consultant Holly Brubach. “Years ago,’’ she told me, “people floated the theory that fashion is really a coded language spoken only by women. I’m not sure I ever entirely bought it, but if there is ever a time in a women’s life when it’s true, it’s when she is a teenager. Fashion is a way of expressing identify, and at that age, usually nothing is more important than fitting in with one’s peer group.’’
Hence the outfit that most of the girls in our local high school wear most of the time: a pair of preferably brand-name jeans, and a close-fitting top. Not too many have the inclination or the will to deviate for long. As it happens, this is a flattering look for my daughter, but that’s not the name of the game here; the girls seem more driven to own cool than to actually look cool. But it’s not as if girls in this group could be counted on to objectively analyze what they actually look like. Self-image is susceptible to distortion at any phase in life, but perhaps never so much as during the generally narcissistic and hypersensitive days of adolescence.
But the safety of conformity can be confining, of course. “I think girls might have had some things working in their favor before,’’ says Brubach. She recalls that her high school that didn’t require a uniform, but it did forbid jeans. “That almost forced us into wearing a wider variety of clothing. We got to wear more things, we got to see more things, a wider range of choices was acceptable, and from that, we began developing a more individual style.’’
Which, slowly but surely, is what is happening with my daughter. You can see her taking steps, tentative though they may be. A few months ago, she and her best friend co-hosted a Sweet Sixteen. Each selected a long, beautiful gown, special jewelry, a special hairstyle, and—to round 
off the look—a pair of high-topped tennis shoes (in a matching color, of course—and without mesh.) Their messages were clear: to their friends, they were saying we’re taking this glamour look seriously, but not too seriously; to mom and dad, they were saying that [our] heads and bodies may be veering into adulthood, but at bottom, we’re still kids.
Last month my daughter was given a ticket to a concert by Britney Spears, a performer who had not previously ranked among her favorites. She brought home two souvenirs: a Britney trucker cap, an ordinary item that could serve as a badge indicating that she’d been to this cool event, and a loose-fitting T-shirt bearing the phrase “It’s Britney, Bitch,’’ from one of the singer’s recent songs. For a moment, I felt my inner Church Lady rising to the surface, but I soon got the message: she’s may not be ready for hot pants and halters, or to emulate Britney’s brazenness in full, but with this shirt, she’s telling us something important. Think of it as a flag planted on the unexplored shore of adulthood.
Notably, she has yet to wear it to school, to subject the garment, and her message, to the judgment of her peers. But the time may come. “Eventually, most of us stop trying to fit in by being like everybody else,’’ my friend Holly comforts me, “and we start trying to fit in as ourselves.’’
(This article recently appeared in BG, the magazine of Bergdorf Goodman.)