For most visitors to Las Vegas, it’s the bright lights and mammoth buildings that catch their eye first. But something much closer to the ground struck awe in producer Antoine Wade. “I saw this 12-year-old kid wearing the same Versace shoes that I had,” he recalls. “It spoke to me about how fashion and the love of sneakers have evolved.”

This anecdotal observation touches on what seems to be a larger shift among today’s kids, who may be the most fashion-forward generation yet.

There’s no longer a “time lag” in trends and style discourse reaching kids, notes Kat DePizzo, president of Justice Design Lab. “[They] are constantly inundated with information,” she adds, gesturing to her smartphone and noting that it’s a different world from the days when they had to flip through a teen magazine to get their fashion fix.

A cursory glance at the major social platforms shows teen-driven fashion subcultures on TikTok and young vloggers who film and share everything from back-to-school style advice to hair-braiding tutorials. Even younger-skewing platforms like Roblox have gained prominence as hubs for virtual fashion.

And yet this trend feels underserved in the kids and family TV landscape since most fashion-adjacent titles (like Project Runway or even Emily in Paris) fall into the adult content category. Is this an opportunity for a few producers to flip the script?

Reality runway

The imbalance is not lost on Richard Bradley, CCO and co-founder of British studio Lion Television. “As far as we know, there’s no fashion design show for youngsters,” he says.

And he finds this peculiar, given how much fashion-centric content the younger demo consumes and manifests on the internet. “We wanted to create a show [that] cele- brated the creativity of young people at a time when a lot of media concentrates on them as consumers.”

That’s why Lion is producing Style It Out, hosted by TV presenter Emma Willis. This 11 x 28-minute series will launch on CBBC in 2024, featuring stylists Ayishat Akanbi and Jorge Antonio as judges. Its premise challenges aspiring kid designers/stylists to come up with the perfect outfit for a given theme, using only secondhand and recycled materials.

The sustainability twist is what attracted BBC Children’s commissioning editor Melissa Hardinge, who also appreciates how the show raises the fast-fashion issue, tackles themes like body positivity and, notably, features clothing options that are within the financial reach of most families. “Fashion has been a difficult area for TV to commission into for a young audience because previously it was about brands and shopping,” she says.

This fresh spin is already resonating with 10- to 14-year-olds, who inundated the Style It Out team with contestant applications. “There has never been a time when young people have been so vocal about expressing their own personal style and individuality,” Hardinge adds.

And that’s not all that’s disrupting the family-friendly reality category—Wade teamed up with producers Rhyan LaMarr and Marcus Andrews this year to create the footwear-focused series Just for Kicks. “Sneaker culture transcends age gaps,” he notes, and that makes it a great theme for factual co-viewing. (Rooted in the enthusiasm for sneakers and the art of collecting and trading them, the sneaker subculture came to life in the US in the 1980s, before going global in the ’90s.)

Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment will launch Just for Kicks on its Crackle AVOD service this fall. The series features a talk-show format mixed with gaming elements, with entertainment and NBA stars telling the story behind a pair of sneakers they own, and then taking part in games and challenges.

The show’s eclectic lineup of guests range from old-school rap artists like Bun B to modern influencers such as Adam W. “It’s hitting both ends of the spectrum, as it relates to up-and-coming gamers and hip-hop for the teen audience, plus the nostalgic icons [for their parents],” says Michele Fino, Crackle Connex’s head of branded entertainment.

Sartorial storytelling

The fourth season of Rainbow High (titled “Project Rainbow”) is a spoof of fashion-centric reality shows.

Even for preschool viewers, who may not be quite as fashion-savvy yet, producers are finding creative ways to make clothing and style central to the narrative. In Amazon Kids+ original series Hello Kitty: Super Style! (pictured at the top), a super-powered bow lets the titular feline change into a wide variety of outfits and use the skills associated with each one, from cooking in a chef’s uniform, to mystery-solving in detective gear. “It taps into the empowerment kids feel when dressing up,” says the streamer’s head of original series, Veronica Pickett, who found the sweet-and-stylish takeaway perfectly suited to the show’s four- to eight- year-old target audience.

The producers saw Hello Kitty as the right franchise for a fashion angle. “What struck us in our research about Hello Kitty was how she has always been designed in different costumes from around the world,” says Philippe Alessandri, CEO of co-producer Watch Next Media. “That [universality] is what makes the character.”

One company that has aced the formula of adapting fashionable products into content is toyco MGA Entertainment, which has several big brands under its trendy belt, including the ambitious fourth season of breakout series Rainbow High that rolled out over the summer on YouTube. While the overarching concept centers around a girl squad at a visual arts school, MGA CCO Anne Parducci says this season (aptly titled “Project Rainbow”) plays up “spoofs of many of the fashion-related reality TV shows that we’ve seen in the past,” including familiar tropes like contestants dramatically voting someone off in each round (with the more kid-friendly consequence of having to head back to class).

Besides nostalgia, MGA is also mining celebrity power for its franchise-building push for the IP. When a storyline took the students to Malibu, MGA brought fashion icon Paris Hilton on board to voice the headmistress at Pacific Coast High. This move proved lucrative, generating 3.8 million views on YouTube for Hilton’s first appearance, and leading to a fan-demanded Rainbow High doll created in her likeness.

As another example, when MGA launched a Mini Bratz line based on beauty mogul Kylie Jenner in August, the team developed specific social media content—such as animating the dolls to sashay along a runway for the launch video on TikTok. Such “campy” content builds hype among multiple generations, from tweens to kidults, says Bratz art director Chelsea Green. “Users want to see what unexpected turn the content will take next and have fun looking for memorable fashion references and Easter eggs—like the large boots in the [background of the launch video] alluding to something more to come.”

Fashion forecast

A voice acting stint on toon series Rainbow High by Y2K fashion icon Paris Hilton led fans to demand a doll in her character’s likeness.

Ancillary opportunities are obviously a big boon for fashion-based content, as evidenced by Crackle’s plans to bolster Just For Kicks. “We’re thinking about the broadcast experience,” says Fino, adding that ideas include potential shopping overlays (such as QR codes that link to a brand’s online store) or sponsorships that don’t interrupt the viewing. “For example, we’re [looking at] some technologies where hitting pause [can bring up] a fashion brand’s Instagram feed in real time.”

Looking ahead, early plans are in the works to explore localized offshoots of the sneaker series, according to Wade and LaMarr. “Because it’s not just in America—we could have a UK version with soccer players on as guests,” Wade enthuses. “Or a version in Asia, where the sneaker market is huge.”

As factual content slowly ages down, producers like Canada’s Waterside Studios are also catching the fashion bug to elevate their fictional content. Any premise dealing with fashion can provide an “aspirational world that young audiences love to pull back the curtain on,” observes author-producer Jeff Norton, who heads up Waterside.

Settings like boarding schools and elite sports are popular in teen content, so it’s no surprise that Holly Smale’s novel Geek Girl— which follows a neurodivergent 15-year-old as she juggles high school and a foray into modeling—proved perfect for Waterside, which is developing it as a same-name live-action series (10 x 30 minutes).

Netflix and Corus have already greenlit the project, and Norton is confident that the premise has all the makings of compelling teen TV. “As a narrative milieu, the fashion world has it all—big personalities, high stakes, byzantine social structures…and, of course, incredible clothes.”

This story originally appeared in Kidscreen‘s October/November 2023 magazine issue.