It’s not easy being tween – what with all the deadlines of high school, the machinations of your frenemies and that hyper-sexualised culture of mass consumption everyone’s worried about, it’s never been as hard as it is today to be a bright young thing blossoming on the cusp of adolescence.
Gone are summer holidays spent poolside, countryside or outside your closest Westfield, today’s style-savvy teens with a penchant for Prada – or at least those worried about getting ahead in the world – have their burgeoning careers in the fashion industry to worry about.
Hold onto your jobs Gen Y. For a mere $1, 295, today’s aspiring de la Renta or Roitfeld can attend a five-day summer camp, or Fashion Camp, at the LIM College in Manhattan (‘if you can make it there…’) to be schooled in the invaluable art of blogging, attend museums, be lectured to by prominent stylists and partake in hugely inspiring ‘market visits’ to educational institutions Barney’s, Saks and Hermès.
One lucky camp-goer Arizona Semones from Idaho, aspires to be – at the tender age of twelve – the next Coco Chanel “because she’s at the top of the fashion empire.” Perhaps Arizona is too young to know that her role model has been dead for forty years. Perhaps Arizona knows very little of what it means for her role model to have been a Gestapo collaborator and Nazi sympathiser. Perhaps I’m being too cynical, and I’ll always have a jaded perception of American summer camps thanks to my being raised on the Addams Family Values. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.
Words by Nicholas Carolan
