Children's clothes grow up

Usually children's wear is as resistant to fashion as Scottish kilts or synchronised swimming caps. Styles come and go but as a general rule, blue is good, red better and everything comes equipped with either a pocket, a toggle or a bow. But recently, there's been a quiet revolution and all of a sudden, the shops are full of the new trend - children's wear that is, gasp, tasteful.

Taste has never traditionally been an issue when buying children's clothes. It wasn't so much that kids wore tacky outfits, it was more that children's clothes were bright and that was that. Primary colours ruled the roost, black was banished until you reached your teens and pastels popped up every summer like a tribe of sugar mice. Now all that has changed and cruising through children's clothes departments is like doing kit inspection down at the Curragh. Khaki is a big colour for kids these days, closely followed by beige, stone, taupe, navy, black and white; children's wear is a neutral issue. There's a precedent in all this because not so long ago, adults took to wearing leisure wear in exactly these colours - cargo pants in khaki or cream, layers of flowing beige and "greige" tunics, plaid shirts for men. Children, it seems, no longer get to dress like children; they get to dress like a legion of small adults.

Of course, this is nothing new - one of the best games of all when you're a child is dressing as a grown-up, complete with size seven stilettos, lipstick or a briefcase. Countless Athena posters in the 1980s depicted nothing other than children dressed up as adults. Now, though, the manufacturers of clothes for kids are making it particularly easy for children to look like their parents every day of the week. Cargo pants for kids are everywhere, in navy, cream and black as well as traditional khaki, and in limitless variations like shorts, pinafores - there's even a cargo pants-inspired baseball cap in Dunnes Stores.

These do make sense for children as they're usually made of hard-wearing, easily washable canvas and they appeal to the side of children that can't get enough of small pockets. Although quite what a three year old owns to put in the 11 pockets attached to one pair of Dunnes Stores trousers is a mystery which will only to be solved when you put the whole lot through the washing machine. These cargo pants should presumably be teamed with some of the millions of shirts, jumpers and T-shirts in suitably muted colours in the shops - Benetton has a range of country classics that even includes mini padded jackets a la Sloan Ranger; Mothercare offers lots of very manly plaid shirts, and Ralph Lauren Polo has an extensive range of cream sweaters which are essential for those small boys who plan on spending a lot of time in Cape Cod.

Indeed, children today tend to look as though they're en route to the Royal Cork Yacht Club for a busy day's sailing or about to head off for a stint in the DJ box. Calvin Klein offers boys a very funky navy funnel neck jacket in plasticised canvas, although at £90, you'd want to make sure your eight year old is earning a DJ's wages. Then there's plenty of hoodie T-shirts and jumpers (Dunnes Stores has a very cool petrol blue one) and baggycrotched jeans for the rapper latent in every six-year-old.

GREY is another big seller this summer. If you put your seven-year-old in the very smart zip-front jacket and trousers by DKNY in Brown Thomas, you could conceivably send her to work in your place for the day and nobody would notice. The irony is you, her Mammy, are just as likely to be wearing a pink floral skirt, an orange embroidered T-shirt, lots of little bracelets and a big purple rose in your hair. Just as kids' stuff gets classy, adults have decided that it's their turn to have a go of the primary colours, the pretty pinks, the floral prints and the dinky accessories. Even men are trooping into work with shirts and ties of bright blue, purple and pink, colours that their seven-year-old wouldn't be seen dead in.

Still, if your children are young enough to be sartorially influenced and you're determined that they're not going to look like little Action Men, there's still colour to be found. Monsoon, in particular, looks like a flower garden in full bloom, with fabric daisies sewn onto gingham frocks and pansies adorning canvas pinnies. If it's smocking you're after then Laura Ashley is still the classic, and you could check out its take on cargo pants in raspberry pink broderie anglaise while you're there. Alternatively, you could turn your strait-laced preppy girls into hippy chicks with some of the summer of love gear that's in the shops. Benetton has a whole range of tie-died T-shirts, vests and dresses that would look very cute on your four-year-old; Dunnes Stores has a very 1970s cheese cloth number, complete with mirror embroidery which is a snip at £7, or you could scoop a peasant blouse in Monsoon and re-enact the Timotei ad on your front lawn.

If you're still looking for ideas on how to dress your own small adult this summer, you should check out the Children's Fashion Show in aid of the National Children's Hospital in Tallaght. It's taking place in the Radisson Hotel in Booterstown on May 7th, and all our models, as well as some other local children, will be there to show off some summer styles from 10 different stores, including Brown Thomas, Hullabaloo, Kidzone, Avoca Handweavers and Marian Gale.

Whichever way your child chooses to dress this summer, you can take heart from the fact that it'll all change soon enough. Once all of these tasteful muted shades become common currency for kids, you may be quite sure they won't be seen dead in them when they hit their teens. Won't it be a nice change to have a 14-year-old refusing to wear anything but a lovely bright blue?

For information and tickets for the fashion show in aid of the National Children's Hospital, call Siobhan Moore at 01 2880357 or Jacintha Williams at 01 2602560.