Clothing lines founded by moms and daughters are addressing a critical gap in the market: fashion for girls between 8 and 12
By: Tara Weiss
Ariella Maizner started sewing at age 6. By 9, she was making clothes for herself and friends. That hobby became the launchpad for her tween clothing line, Theme. At 10, she was showing off her designs during New York Fashion Week.
Theme’s clothes exist on the line between girlhood and grown-up. Dresses are strapless but come with detachable straps in case the tween isn’t comfortable baring her shoulders. Special-occasion dresses have cutouts but can be worn with the opening in the front or back, depending on the girl’s comfort level—and what her parents allow. Many of the dresses are either smocked in the back or have ties, allowing the garments to grow with their wearer as her body changes. Spaghetti straps have buttons to securely adjust the length.
“When I design, I think about what the girl wants—because I am the girl,” said Ariella, now a 16-year-old high school sophomore at a New York City public school. Her mom, Debbie Maizner, previously a global marketing executive at JPMorgan Chase, manages operations for Theme, which is carried in department stores like Bloomingdales and Saks as well asmore than 200 boutiques nationwide (and Canada, the U.K. and South America). Its prices for special occasion dresses hover around $120 and pieces in the spring collection start at $44 and rise above $100.
“When I was shopping for party dresses before I made them, it was hard to find ones that were cool and fit,” Ariella said. “I love all the women’s brands, but they don’t come in kid’s sizes. We make dresses that are cool and fit.”
What do tween girls want? Not necessarily what the big brands are selling. Stuck in those in-between ages of 8 and 12, tween girls are looking for something more mature than the kids clothes they used to buy but not so grown-up as the looks being shilled on Instagram in “haul” videos, where influencers show off large quantities of clothing from their shopping sprees. The looks these days are often skimpy tank tops, corsets, and baby doll dresses—a far cry from the sweeter looks being sold at brands geared toward children their size.
“You can’t go to J.Crew and find something that a 12-year-old wants to wear that doesn’t look like it belongs on a 7-year-old,” said Molly Lowe, a mother of three girls in Chicago.
A growing number of brands are looking to fill that gap in the market. They’re being launched by the people who know the demographic best: actual tweens and their moms.
Shari Fine is one of them. She founded KatiejNYC in 2017 after a frustrating experience shopping for a training bra for her daughter Katie, who was 10 at the time. It was so difficult to find one that fit, Fine sewed one herself. She designed it to work three ways—traditional with parallel straps, racerback and halter. Then she had a thought: If her daughter struggled to find a bra, others must be struggling, too.
She sent her original pattern to a manufacturer in China, ordered 10,000 units and created instructions so tween girls could maneuver the bra into the style they desired. It was a hit.
Soon, Fine was selling dresses, specifically designed for tweens with built-in shorts in some skirts and dresses, jean shorts that are one inch longer in the back so too much skin isn’t revealed and crop tops that come down longer on the torso so it doesn’t show too much belly.
“We try to keep it mom- and daughter-approved,” said Fine. “We want a girl to make her own choices and have her own look, but at the same time be age-appropriate.”
Khloe Kardashian is a fan, posting pictures on Instagram with her daughter and niece dancing in KatiejNYC pajamas.
In the early days, Fine ran KatiejNYC from her Long Island basement but has since moved into a 20,000-square-foot warehouse in Roslyn, N.Y. It just opened its first pop-up shop on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, which will last for six weeks.
In recent years, the tween market has seen some big shifts: Tween retailers of yore like Limited Too and Justice no longer have stores at the mall. Forever 21 just filed for bankruptcy. Stores aimed at young adults like Edikted and Princess Polly are all the rage, but for younger girls, the clothes don’t always fit—and some of the styles are too provocative for girls on either side of 10.
“Ten-to-13-year-old girls are ready for a place that feels like it can be their world,” said Frankie Burik Bird, who works with her mom at the brand Frankie’s on the Park. Frankie’s on the Park started when Lisa Burik opened the first boutique in Chicago in 2008 when Frankie was 12-years-old. The idea was to create a space where tweens and their changing bodies could be outfitted with clothing specifically designed for their in-the-middle reality. She sold brands like denim purveyor DL1961, which features jeans with an adjustable waist, an important concept for growing girls who need pants with a certain length that might not coordinate with established waist sizes.
It opened an offshoot in Santa Monica in 2013 and launched an in-house brand, 8apart, featuring dresses and tops with adjustable straps for growing bodies, wrap dresses since they fit multiple body types and V-neck tops with higher necklines than adult versions, in the summer of 2019.
“It’s not scary cheap dresses that freak mom out, and it’s not a teeny baby store,” said Burik Bird, the company’s chief growth officer.
Some stores are getting increasingly savvy to the ways tween girls need to be attracted to shop there. Dillard’s, the Little Rock, Ark.-based department store, launched a dedicated tween section in January 2024. Belk, a department store based in North Carolina, launched its tween shop last year. And the women’s brand LoveShackFancy, beloved by teen girls, started tween-specific sizing with its resort 2023 collection.
Children’s clothing companies, likewise, have adapted to meet the needs of an in-between age group.
Kelly Paschall, co-owner of The Sandbox children’s boutique in Chattanooga, Tenn., has heard customers repeatedly say, “‘My daughter won’t come in because she thinks it’s a baby store.”
So Paschall and her business partner, Bonnie Moses, opened a dedicated tween boutique, The Shore Next Door in October 2022, which is connected to The Sandbox via an opening that allows customers to shop back and forth. They carry boys and girls clothes ages 7 through 14.
Though she observes the occasional mother-daughter fight in the dressing room, Paschall says her customers are overwhelmingly grateful. “Every single day somebody will come and say, ‘I’m so glad you have this store.’”
Read More: Shopping for Tweens Is a Nightmare. These Brands Want to Fix That.