Wednesday marked the end of the first-ever Global Kids’ Fashion Week in London. It was a three-day, celebrity-mom-infused event that featured high-end designer duds – from Missoni to Marni to Fendi – for the elementary school set.

But others question whether luxury designers ought to be marketing to children (and their credit card wielding parents), in the first place.

The Financial Times’ Vanessa Friedman wasn’t a fan of the London Kids’ week even before it started, writing that kids’ clothing should be "a place of freedom" where children can play around with identity and perception— and fashion shows deliver images that are too rigid and “fully formed.” Her fear, it appears, is that kids will see a homogenized view of style, and won’t learn to experiment with their own innate sense of expression.

And in a story for the Daily Beast, writer Tom Sykes raises another question:

“Does the rise of mini-me kid fashion represent a threat to our kid’s innocence, too much pressure to grow up too young, or is high fashion for kids simply an aberration of interest only to a limited class of 1 percenters?”

Jeanne Sager, a senior writer for The Stir and mom to a 7-year old daughter in Callicoon Center, NY, has weighed in on the issue of buying a toddler a pair of $150 True Religion jeans. And she generally agrees with Friedman’s take on Global Kids’ Fashion Week. “There’s a merit to buying quality clothes for elementary school kids,” says Sager, “because I do think kids can be cruel to one another about their clothing choices.”

But most of all, Sagar believes that kids need to feel that they can have fun in what they’re wearing--- that they can get them messed up, and run around outside, and be kids. And $500 dresses just don’t give you that sense of freedom. Sager is also concerned about what, exactly, a child in a pair of Little Marc Jacobs pants or a mini-Burberry coat is being taught about the value of money.

article resource: http://www.today.com/moms/parents-split-kids-fashion-week-uk-1C9006244