I love my in-laws, but they have a penchant for Ralph Lauren, Nautica, etc. They also have a penchant for shopping for the Dudeling (1.25 years), which is great, but it means that he’s often dressed as a … as a person who likes to dress in logo-encrusted ostentationwear. Other times he’s dressed in typical Carter-wear, lots of cute dinosaurs, etc.
I’d like to put a couple cool outfits under the tree this year. Maybe something with cute little images of Cthulhu. Maybe something that reflects him being born to Flashlight or his Father’s days spent following the Grateful Dead around the country.
Also, besides Café Press t-shirts or onesies, I’d love to find cool stores to poke around in—stores along the lines of Babywit or Desigual (but they don’t have baby clothes).
So, Doper parents, aunts and uncles, what have you found?
I remember seeing a bunch of hippie street vendors on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, some of whom sold tie-dyed clothing, including tie-dyed infant clothing. I thought it was pretty funny, but I don’t know what you’d think of it. And I don’t know where you could get it online.
Dharma Trading Co. is one of the best and biggest suppliers for tie-dyers and other fabric artists, and they have a “Featured Artists” page with links. Their clothing blanks, including lots of kids’ stuff, are generally incredibly well made and cheap. If you roll that way it’s fun to dye stuff yourself – I vat-dyed three batches (that is, three plain non-tied colors) of all sizes of things I bought from Dharma, eBay, and local thrift stores before my son was born.
Kinda off-topic, but I also use a seam-ripper liberally on detachable ostentation, and various colors of Sharpies on embroidered ostentation – polo ponies in particular almost disappear that way.
In mainstream brands (which I mostly experience secondhand), I think the nicer choices, in terms of avoiding both saccharine cuteness and faux-preppyism, are Hanna Andersson and The Children’s Place. They are also both very well made and can take much more laundry abuse (and presumably toddler abuse; my son’s not crawling yet, so I’m still guessing there) than Carter’s or Gerber’s, etc. They aren’t Chthulhu-cool, though, but perhaps you could adapt something?
I was also going to suggest The Childrens’ Place. There stuff isn’t “cool” per se, but they have excellent basics without a lot of crap stuck on to them. The prices are really good, and the quality is good as well.
Also, I don’t know if you’ve shopped Target’s baby department recently. Mixed in with the lame stuff they have some truly awesome items. I got my infant niece an AC/DC t-shirt there!
Great timing TruCelt. Emmaliminal’s Dharma Trading Co. link got me thinking of Etsy. I’d never shopped there before, just looked around a bit. It’s a treasure trove!
Emmaliminal–I love a lot of the work there, but can’t seem to find my way to an artists’ page/store. Are the featured artists (like this one) showing off their skill or do they sell? Am I missing an obvious link?
ETA: Ah, he doesn’t sell, but others do. Holy cow is Etsy great for this.