Commodifying Children: Fashion, Space, and the Production of the Profitable Child

Abstract

In this paper we address the emergence of the children's fashion market as part of a broader concern to explore the geographies of children's consumption. We argue that this market is significant in that it offers some theoretical purchase on new forms of commodification, on shifting sourcing and supply relations, and on the varied spatialities of retailing more broadly. We discuss the ways in which children's fashioned bodies act as a site through which they explore and express their self-identity. We focus specifically on the ways in which knowledge, branding, and temporality are shaping this emergent sector, and argue that the speeding up of the industry's ‘clocktimes’ and the spreading out of design impulses are generating particular sets of problems for the industry. We conclude with some reflections on the ways in which children's consumption might be more fully theorised as the combined product of familial relations, social network effects, individualisation, and market structures.