So tell me…
…to whom are these ads targeted? Is this really a winning marketing strategy? Does it make you want to buy J.Crew clothing for your daughters/grandkids/nieces when the models look as if they’d rather eat a pound of lima beans than be seen in these outfits?
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Is this meant to be ironic? (Irony is not my favourite stance: I know it when I see it, but it doesn’t engage me.) Wonder if the grown up offerings are next, lithe girls and buff guys sulking?
There is something seriously wrong with a little girl who can look that depressed while wearing a tutu. I’m just sayin’
Those are seriously ugly outfits. Poor girls, judging from their faces, they know it.
I don’t get it. I don’t believe this suits children or the impetus for buying children’s clothes. What ever happened to the innocence of childhood? You don’t see it here. That is what I want for my grandson, not this.
This add does not encourage me to shop.
What distances me from these ads is not so much the expressions on the girls’ faces, but rather the obvious styling — naive, perhaps, maybe even hypocritical of me,but the whole commodifying of childhood makes me uncomfortable and having it pushed so abrasively in my face makes me want to avoid shopping.
For me, the whole cynical, world-weariness attitude is a turnoff when it comes to children and their clothing. They’ll display enough of that once they hit their teens!
These are meant to attract hipster moms. Who are embarrassed to want to dress their girls all pretty. *sigh*
Dreadful ad, dreadful styling – somebody got paid for that?!
Weirdly, doesn’t bother me. I’m just like “cute tutu.” Maybe I just don’t care about kid models.
I thought mainstream advertisers wanted to take us into a fantasy world, not one where you see (poor facsimiles of) kids being overtired?
I guess I’d be tempted to buy so that they could hire some better child actors.
Doesn’t every kid want to be a neglected rock star’s child, with an embryonic eating disorder, toting huge sacks of candy like a confectioner’s plantation worker and a Big Gulp? I know that’s what I want for my children.
I think Lisa called it. These ads are for aimed at hipster moms. Perhaps J Crew is trying to shed their preppy image and market to a hipper demographic.
I guess I am the only one that thinks these ads are funny. And dare I say, effective, because perhaps their goal was: “let’s give them something to talk about”. Now a whole bunch of people who never JCrew had kids clothes, do! Controversy can be a very effective marketing strategy in the blogosphere. It’s pretty f-ing brilliant, because they don’t even pay you to spread the word. I’m not saying you shouldn’t, mind you…I’m just saying on their part it might be smarter than it looks.
These kids look sad. Why? Plenty of time to be moody and huffy as an adult x
Who did the styling for these shots, Shiloh Jolie-Pitt?!?
Ugh.
sadly, these children also look as if they need to *eat* a pound of lima beans… or jelly beans. i have an adored niece, age 5-1/2 and she likes to wear (and i like to buy her) funky, original looking clothing… but not like this!
Ha! I agree with Poppy!
I had never even realized that j.Crew had a kids line until recently when I picked up a green wool dress for my niece at a thrift store and looked it up! Cute clothes, but seriously that ad is ridiculous. And no, it wouldn’t make me want to buy more!
They’re adorable. When you look at the “yippee” caption about the free shipping, it’s obvious it was meant to be tongue-in-cheek, but I do love your line about the lima beans!
Just read in the WSJ this morning, J. Crew’s profits are up and they are expanding rapidly. A small selection of their clothing is set to be sold on net-a-porter so they’ll be rubbing elbows with a pretty high-falutin’ crowd soon.
Back when the Garnet Hill catalog started (and I would gaze longingly at the natural fibers from my graduate student poverty), they featured unsmiling children. I thought the pics were great and very chic. The expresions were not as extreme as in the crewcuts ad. People are addicted to JCrew (not me) and there are many blogs devoted to the subject, so they must be doing something right! I guess we’ll see if this works!
I think the J. Crew stylists are running out of ideas. Perhaps they should be replaced with some old upstarts.
In general, Crewcuts has happier pics of the kids, so this misses the mark, IMO. While their pieces are cute, the stylists are sometimes way out of whack (much like the stylists for their women’s line). I pick and choose individual items — fairly well made and lovely colors, but frankly, the stuff just doesn’t hold up to normal kid wear and tear. And my kids certainly don’t wear these crazy combinations!
For classic kid stuff, I love Olive Juice Kids…fantastic quality and while the prices may be a little high, twice a year they have wonderful sales. My kids usually wear Olive Juice, boden or Target.
The kids are looking sad because the stylist took a girlie piece and put it with some plaid and desert boots – where are their sparkly shoes? Where are their pink tops?
Those outfits are hideous. Tomorrow morning when she gets up, I will ask my 9 year old what she thinks and post her response. Ought to be interesting, as Miss Thing is quite the fashionista these days.
Ummmmm….I had a boy, no girls, but I surely don’t think I’d be tempted to buy clothes for my kid based on these photos.
Not knowing the brand in question at all, I really should keep my mouth shut, but I have to agree with Lisa and Belle. This looks like a new kind of an approach. A ballet dress, maybe small girls would like to be ballerinas?
When I see these photos, I can relate to the WTF expressions of the models. If only my mom had let me wear those shoes back in the 60’s. However, since these are very different times, I suspect that those kids who model for “generic brand” don’t really give a rat’s arse about what label they are wearing. Kids just want cloths that don’t let anyone see your underwear when you are playing on the jungle gym or the swingbars. Or at least they did back in the day.
Do you think they were directed in the photography session… ‘Look completely fed up and bored girls’ You do make me :-)”Une” ! X
Aha! The resident 9 year old fashionista said “Why is she making that face?”
“What do you think of the outfits?”
(shaking head ruefully) “Uhhhh….no. Those are not cute.”