Children's Fashion
Buy and sell children’s clothes and shoes in Panama.
A first-communion dress is worn for one morning and then hangs in a garment bag for years, which makes it one of the few children’s pieces that reaches a second family close to new. Most children’s clothing goes the other way: play shorts, school-day trainers and party outfits for boys and girls from toddler age to the early teens are worn hard and outgrown fast. New and pre-owned, the two are judged differently: for the white dress the question is how it was stored, for everything else it is the knees, the snaps and the soles.
Boys’ and girls’ clothes, from playground shorts to ceremony wear:
children dress alike when they are small and drift apart once school starts. In toddler sizes plenty of cotton sets and pyjamas are cut the same for boys and girls, so hand-me-downs pass between brothers and sisters without fuss. From school age the cuts, colours and occasions separate: boys’ fashion leans towards football shorts and polo shirts, girls’ fashion towards dresses and leggings, and the split carries through to girls’ shoes and boys’ shoes. Ceremony wear is where the two meet again, in white and pale colours, worn for a few hours.
Adjustable waistbands, cotton blends and room to grow:
decide how long a piece stays in use. Trousers, shorts and skirts with buttonhole elastic inside the waistband can be pulled in for a slim child and let out later, which often buys a whole extra size of wear. Pure cotton is the cooler choice for a playground at noon, but it shrinks in a hot dryer; cotton-polyester blends hold their size and dry faster on a line. Buy everyday clothes a little long and ceremony clothes to fit on the day, because a communion dress can be taken in at the bodice but rarely let out. On jackets and hoodies for young children, pull the cord out of the hood: it can catch on a slide or a bus door.
First-communion dresses, page-boy suits and flower-girl outfits:
are bought new for one ceremony and seldom worn again. A girl’s communion dress from a Panama children’s boutique runs from around $300 to over $500, before the bolero, headband and candle that go with it. Because the wear is a single morning, a used one is priced on how it was stored rather than how often it was worn: a dress that has stayed white, with its beading complete, holds on to a good part of what it cost, while one that has yellowed in a plastic bag struggles to find a taker at all. Page-boy and flower-girl outfits work the same way, except that their colours are chosen to match one wedding, so a white or ivory piece finds a second family far more easily than a coral one.
Knees, snaps and character prints on second-hand kids’ clothes:
show how hard a piece has been played in. Check the knees of trousers and leggings for thinning before the holes arrive, and work every press stud and zip: snaps tear out of thin fabric, and one broken snap turns a jumpsuit into a struggle every morning. Screen prints crack after too many hot washes, and Velcro clogged with lint stops holding a shoe shut. Licensed character clothes, the Disney, Marvel and Pokémon prints children ask for by name, normally carry a copyright line on the label or beside the print; a copy often has none, and its colours are slightly off. On a ceremony dress, look for wax drips from the candle, grey along the hem from the church floor and loose beads at the waist.
A child’s height, the complete set and a fitting before the ceremony:
are what a parent needs from a listing. Size labels differ between an American label and a Colombian one, so give the height of the child each piece fitted and two measurements taken flat: chest across and length from shoulder to hem. For a communion dress or a wedding outfit, list every piece that comes with it, photograph the bodice and hem up close and say how many times it was worn. Most families want the child to try a ceremony dress on before paying, so say whether a fitting is possible where you are. If a seamstress has already taken the dress in or let it out, put that in the listing too: a tuck can be undone in an afternoon, but a seam let out to its edge has nothing left to give.