More lavish spending creating catwalk kids

Give me the child until he's seven and I will give you the man. Clothes designers are seeking to do more than paraphrase the Jesuit maxim - and are succeeding. According to British retailing research, the fastest growing sector of the designer label market is children's wear.

The main department stores here show a similar picture. Where nine to 10 years ago 80 per cent of Arnott's children's wear was in the lower-end price bracket, today about 90 per cent is from the high-end, designer label bracket.

Over the past 10 years Calvin Klein, DKNY, Versace and Christian Dior have been among those who have added children's wear to their adult collections. Ms Maria Healy, owner of Baby Bambino, one of the premier children's wear shops in the Republic was the first retailer here to stock Baby Dior, whose babygrows range in price from about £50 (€63.49) to £70. "Oh, people are definitely spending more on the children's clothes," she says. "They want quality and originality." Ms Collette O'Leary, of Brown Thomas, who has just bought the children's collection for spring 2000, attributes the changes the market has made to a combination of a higher birth rate and a rise in the average disposable income of over 20 per cent in the past five years.

"The most popular brands we stock are Ralph Lauren, DKNY, OshKosh and Calvin Klein. And, honestly, people from all walks of life are happily spending £20 to £30 on a kiddy's DKNY T-shirt. It is not the preserve of the wealthy at all. "

The owner of the Papillon stores in Limerick and Ennis, Co Clare, Ms Helen Lernihan is aggressively seeking new labels and designs from all over the world.

Despite the fact that the numbers of babies being born here has risen every year since 1994 and that 40 per cent of those born in 1998 were to first-time mothers - reputedly more enthusiastic about dressing baby up - there is, according to IBEC, no designer or manufacturer in the Republic dedicated to producing children's wear.

The children's wear market is valued at about £260 million a year, according to Enterprise Ireland, compared to a women's market worth £865 million and a men's market worth £596 million.

However, the children's wear sector is growing faster than these markets and among those areas identified as potential growth areas for Irish manufacturers are children's co-ordinated fashion hats and coats, outwear for girls under 14 years, girls nightdresses, baby fashion accessories, new designs in baby nightwear and Irish-made and branded babywear for gifts.

It is no secret that the clothing industry is finding it almost impossible to compete with the lower labour costs in the Far East and North Africa. OshKosh's Irish representative, Mr Patrick Burke, argues that the Irish should be satisfied with the spin-off industries we get in distributing, advertising and selling the children's clothes we import.

"It would be wiser to educate people about where the future of the industry lies," he says.

However, by far the majority of brands sashaying down the catwalks on children across Europe are European brands such as Grant (Italian), Pitti Bimbo (French) and Roobarb and Custard (British). Although manufactured outside Europe these clothes are enormously successful, profitable and designed in Europe.

Design and branding, says Mr Giles O'Neill, head of consumer products at Enterprise Ireland, is the future for Irish children's wear. "There is a need to invest in looking at what the market wants, in design and in the future of design."

He points to such developments as the computer aided design used by Benneton, which requires very little manual intervention and guarantees uniformity of quality.

There is some sign the Irish clothing industry is moving to adapt, he says. He cites Dublin's Mr Michael Heather, who was recently named Best Supplier by the British market, and Dublin's Styletex which supplies to British chain Oasis.

It is not "all doom and gloom", he insists.