A few photos from 14-year-old Hailee Steinfeld’s new Fall 2011 Miu Miu campaign have emerged and while Miu Miu is one of my favorite brands and I think Hailee looks adorable in their clothes, the photo above kind of freaks me out in the same way Elle Fanning becoming “fashion’s latest muse” at 13 years old freaks me out.
I think Hailee above and Elle Fanning in Marie Claire posted below look amazing and I admit, I love the photos. I feel like this brings up a lot of questions for me though. My first thought was “Can’t we have some grown ass women be ‘fashion muses’ instead of little girls?” It made me think of my earlier post about girly culture and online media. The writers of the two articles I mentioned were afraid women were dumbing themselves down to try and act like little girls by liking things they considered “too young” for adults. The lines get blurred when we have things like this though. These clothes were designed for women, but are being modeled by little girls. If we try to emulate this style, are we trying to look younger as they do or is it just another form of inspiration? If I’m going to embrace girliness and liking things considered too young for me, do I embrace the young themselves as well? On the other hand, it does put my mind at ease to see blogs like Advanced Style and hear 70-year-old ladies called fashion it girls.
So it seems to me that the question becomes: Is it wrong to embrace teens as muses and models or even as legitimate fashion writers a la Style Rookie or, when it comes to fashion, is age just a number?
