Status clothes on kids

[Anonymous]

Its an odd one-dimensional view of op's dh to take but it is also a window into the ways he views people and the intentions behind their actions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oh no, and this whole time I thought that the reason people scoffed at my children wearing Duke gear was because they hate our basketball team, but you're telling me it's because they think we're pretentious??

Around here? In Maryland? We aren’t even in the acc and still hate you guys. It could be both 😜

It was a joke. And we live in Virginia anyway. It's so weird that Maryland thinks Duke is their rival and nobody at Duke cares even the tiniest bit about your school. We have one rival and one rival only.

[Anonymous]

lol- I should make my kid a shirt that says “my mom is a surgeon”

[Anonymous]

My girls are teens and love wearing college stuff, does not matter where from. It’s more of a fashion thing than a “I went here” or “I want to go here” thing. Oldest is headed to college in the fall and I’m curious if she will continue wearing other schools or not.

Work clothes and destination clothes are fine with me too. The way travel is these days - anyone can visit anywhere, it doesn’t make you rich.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My girls are teens and love wearing college stuff, does not matter where from. It’s more of a fashion thing than a “I went here” or “I want to go here” thing. Oldest is headed to college in the fall and I’m curious if she will continue wearing other schools or not.

Work clothes and destination clothes are fine with me too. The way travel is these days - anyone can visit anywhere, it doesn’t make you rich.

Um….no. Many many people cannot afford to travel outside of their immediate region let alone anywhere they want! There are thousands of people in DC or Baltimore that have never even seen the mountains or a beach that wasn’t on a screen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Its an odd one-dimensional view of op's dh to take but it is also a window into the ways he views people and the intentions behind their actions.

I don't know. I think it's just more of a knee jerk "don't show off" attitude that a lot of people are raised with. My parents were this way. They would remind us not to brag, not to make a big deal about family purchases at school (like if we got a new car or my dad bought a boat, not to go crowing about that at school). This seems in that line, like "no let's not send our kids to school in sweatshirts that say 'Yale' or 'Martha's Vinyard' because it seems show-offy."

I don't think it's any deeper than that. Just a desire to be a bit lower key.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:We're French. We don't look French to Americans because we're not Caucasian. My kids have worn plenty of French items over the years.

My husband once worked for a certain well-known company and brought home apparel from it.

What you're missing is that in those circles there's no specific message attached to it. People wear what's available.

You sound embarrassingly insecure.

OP here and I am not bothered by this, but my husband told me that "many people" find it pretentious. I don't care either way.

But you also misread my post because I wasn't talking about wearing "French items". I was talking specifically about t-shirts, hats, and sweatshirts advertising the name of luxury vacation destinations. Not wearing something with French words or something. But something clearly purchased at a luxury destination indicating the person had been to that destination.

PP you replied to. Oh, I understood you perfectly. We go to certain places that your husband might consider fancy, and buy stuff there, in France or elsewhere.

Your husband is showing his class insecurities, OP. You need to educate him. Tell him he will always have more than someone else. Right now, somebody looked at your husband and thought he was pretentious. He has a car, he has a home, he dresses in normal clothes, right? Well, to a certain group of people, that's already rich and smug! Other people will always have more than he has. He needs to accept that and live his own life.

I find it hilarious that your husband would criticize the barely upper middle class, and not the staggeringly wealthy who own private jets, for ex. What does he mean by pretentious? Does he think people "plot" what logos they're going to display on any given day? Does he think they're not as rich as they want to signal? If it's a company shirt, that's stupid.

Your husband is just not making sense. It's his anxiety talking.

Lol, Madame -- I think you are showing your insecurities, actually. My husband is from a much wealthier background than I am, and attended an Ivy. This came up because we recently attended a reunion at his alma mater and bought our kid a sweatshirt, and my husband is embarrassed when the kid wears it because he thinks other people find it pretentious.

But by all means, do keep posting paragraph upon paragraph expounding on your feelings on this subject -- I've been reading these posts to him and every time you say "I am French" he gets a good laugh.

Au revoir mon cheri!

You're reading DCUM posts out loud to your husband and he is laughing? This is weird.

I do this sometimes. My husband will even ask me "what is DC mad about today?" if I'm on the site.

I do think any post that starts with "We're French," where neither the OP nor the thread was talking about people's nationality and it's not really relevant is kind of funny. There are definitely one or more posters on this site who want to emphasize "I'm French" or "I'm European" like it makes them more qualified to weight in on something. You see it a lot in the Beauty and Fashion forum.

This one in particular drives me nuts. Why do we care what Albanians think?

[Anonymous]

Where we live on the west coast now, it’s commonplace to wear a t-shirt branded with one of the local unis, which is in the top 20 but also the alma mater of many parents. DH and I both attended top Ivies (HYP), which are very uncommon alma maters in our area, and while I don’t hide it, I don’t bring it up unless someone asks me where I went to uni. I do think it would come across a little braggy if we wore our college t-shirt, but I’m not going to stop my kids if they want to. DH is in big law and has gotten so much nice outerwear with his law firm’s name. Of course we and the kids wear it! Why spend $200 on a Patagonia top when we got one for free? I think forgoing a perfectly good item of clothing because it’s corporate branded is kind of pretentious because you think people will care.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’d have more of a problem with a kid wearing a Dior shirt that says the brand name or has a noticeable symbol/pattern. But wearing a Skadden sweatshirt when your mom works there is totally fine.

Please. Who needs a shirt that says "My mom works in BigLaw"?

Unless you are painting the set for the school play, that sounds really show-offy.

To whom? I have no idea who or what Skadden is. I'm an exec at a large defense company and DH is one at a FAANG. I'm pretty sure people know both of them, but maybe not. I'm also pretty sure nobody would think it's showy if we (or the kids) were wearing polos or whatever from our companies.

FAANG is kind of stupid. Does he work at Apple? Google? The other ones I don’t remember? And no one want to share the fact that they work in “defense” so you don’t have to worry.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’d have more of a problem with a kid wearing a Dior shirt that says the brand name or has a noticeable symbol/pattern. But wearing a Skadden sweatshirt when your mom works there is totally fine.

Please. Who needs a shirt that says "My mom works in BigLaw"?

Unless you are painting the set for the school play, that sounds really show-offy.

To whom? I have no idea who or what Skadden is. I'm an exec at a large defense company and DH is one at a FAANG. I'm pretty sure people know both of them, but maybe not. I'm also pretty sure nobody would think it's showy if we (or the kids) were wearing polos or whatever from our companies.

FAANG is kind of stupid. Does he work at Apple? Google? The other ones I don’t remember? And no one want to share the fact that they work in “defense” so you don’t have to worry.

FAANG makes no sense now. First of all, it's Meta, not Facebook, now. But no one says "MAANG." But it's even more outdated than that, and doesn't include Nvidia, Open AI, or Anthropic, arguably more influential now than, say, Netflix. Microsoft and Oracle are also older tech companies doing interesting new things -- no idea why they wouldn't be included in that group.

Plus many of the companies in this grouping are reviled by a lot of people, so I wouldn't go advertising it. Specifically, I'd be wary if I worked for Meta or Amazon -- either one can get a very negative response from some people, and if it's someone I am meeting through my kid or the school, I don't see the point. You can just say "I work in tech" or my personal preference: "Oh my job is so boring, let's talk vacations instead."