I asked MM what kind of clothes he likes to wear the other day, since his 6 year old sister seems to have such strong opinions on the subject. This was his response:
“I don’t know how to answer that question…. clothes?”
And yet, despite those very simple guidelines, we had to go to three different stores just to find him a few tops, a pair of jeans and some pajamas. This is the conundrum that is my life. Why did we have such a hard time? I think it’s probably just because of his age – he’s at this crossroads between kids’ clothes and teen clothes. He doesn’t want to wear skulls and cross bones or anything, but he doesn’t necessarily want clothes that are too kiddish either. And his size seems to perplex the fashion industry because he is neither husky nor lanky – he’s just a kid.
And a lot of the kids clothes seem to last roughly forty seven seconds before they have rips, stains, holes and tears (mine) going on. I love H&M for BB, but their clothes don’t really work for MM. The boys clothes there are very slender frame hipster – MM is neither of those things. He’s not chubby by anyone’s standards but he’s not lanky either so his clothes need room to breathe. H&M is out.
Target is okay for t-shirts but their pants never last long enough to justify buying them. Old Navy is also great for tops – we found a fantastic Minecraft tee there that I couldn’t find online to show you (there’s a 96% chance it will make a showing on the first day of school). But we couldn’t find boys pajamas there anywhere and I was unimpressed with the jeans. He honestly lives in running shorts most days but I wanted to get him at least one good pair of jeans going into the new school year.
So we ended up at Lands End after a few disappointing tromps through previously mentioned stores where we snagged the glow in the dark long sleeve tee above and took advantage of the Iron Knee jeans. That means they have an invisible polyester patch that adds double the durability where pants need it most. Cross your fingers for us that these jeans make it through the school year or I might never buy him pants again.
Like his sister, he’ll be sporting last year’s back pack from LL Bean again which totally lives up to it’s reputation for durability – and you should see the giant load of books he was bringing home all last year! Before buying these bags, it seemed like we were going through 2-3 book bags per school year so I’m stoked to see that this one survived a full school year and is geared up and ready to do it again.
As far as how he would accessorize this look or others? I don’t think nine year old boys accessorize, really. He’s a big fan of baseball hats, much like his father- the Storm Troopers hat above is from Target and if he ever loses the 7 hats he already has, he can talk to me about getting one. The watch is also from Target and it’s something he’d probably really like, we’re big Phineas & Ferb fans around here. And his only requirements for sneakers seem to be “preferably blue and green” – we’d like to add the requirement that they have a decent foot bed, good soles and a chance in the dark at surviving a full school year. We tend to shop at Famous Footwear for his sneakers and have pretty good luck there.
Mommablogsalot 
2 responses to “Back to School Fashion for Him: Fourth Grade Finds.”
I love this. My 5 year old doesn’t care about clothes yet either – other than being comfortable. We didn’t even buy new clothes for school. He’s too young to care about impressing anyone. I will at least try to make sure his clothes match on the first day of school since there will be pictures.
We bought an L.L. Bean back pack as well. I still have mine from high school, so I know his will last also. I was a little bummed that we couldn’t get his name embroidered on – the limit is 10 letters, and Christopher has 11. I didn’t think of that when picking him name. The color selection for boys was pretty poor as well. His favorite color is yellow, which they don’t have, so he ended up picking red – my favorite! 🙂
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I took an inventory of the kids’ clothes last week to see what they actually had that fit and was surprised to see a few things that were overdue for replacing so we ended up doing more “back to school” shopping for clothes than I’d thought we would but still nothing compared to what I think 99% of the population does. I bought him 3 shirts and a pair of pants – and a new pair of pajamas.
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