She is barely out of nappies, which is surely a design statement far away from a little girl like her. By what or whose twisted definition is she a woman?
Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’ daughter has been placed in 21st position in Glamour magazine’s annual poll, in which readers are invited to vote for their favourite style icons.
Growing up too soon: Suri Cruise has 'the most coveted wardrobe in Hollywood'
Amid claims that Suri has ‘the most coveted wardrobe in Hollywood’, the tot came after Jennifer Aniston at 11, but beat Lady Gaga and Sarah Jessica Parker. Stick that in your discounted Louboutins, ladies.
Normally, best-dressed lists are just a bit of harmless fun, but there is something very wrong here. It has gone too, too far with Suri Cruise.
But it is not just that she is being compared to adult women more than four times her age. They, like 21-year-old actress Emma Watson who topped the poll, are old enough make their own style choices; to dress as provocatively as they like and mince about in tiny dresses and high heels as the mood or whim takes them.
Too far: Best-dressed lists are normally just a bit of harmless fun, but there is something very wrong with Suri's new title
Style conscious: Suri, pictured with her mother Katie Holmes, has developed expensive tastes in clothes
They have control over how they are presented to the outside world. They are adults. Suri Cruise is not. She cannot possibly understand how trotting along in Giorgio Armani couture with a £500 Ferragamo handbag in the crook of her tiny arm makes her seem freakish and weird.
Always silent and unsmiling in public, she increasingly seems to be some sort of Stepford kidult — instead of being a lovely little girl with scabby knees, ice lolly stains and many long summers of innocent childhood stretching ahead of her.
No wonder she gets a lot of strange attention from the media, even if that makes me feel uneasy, too. Yet this latest inclusion in a glossy magazine’s best-dressed list is the worst imposition so far. Is it in Suri Cruise’s best interests to have her name on such a list? Of course it isn’t.
Babe in arms: Despite dressing like a much older woman, Suri - with parents Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes - is still only five years old
Bank of mum and dad: Little Suri cannot possibly understand how trotting along in Giorgio Armani couture with a £500 Ferragamo handbag in the crook of her tiny arm makes her seem freakish and weird
Much has been written about the ‘pimping’ of our children; the ongoing and creeping sexualisation of youngsters that is widespread in society.
The entire concept of girldom (and boyhood) seems to have gone, swallowed up in a ferment of trainer bras, Bratz dolls, incessant sex education and glittery eye make-up.
Hardly a week seems to go by without another teacher being charged with having sex with underage girls or boys in their care. And although it might only be a fashion list, doesn’t Suri’s inclusion represent a further despoiling of innocence down the age chain? Global style icon at five, ruined at 25?
Best dressed: Romeo Beckham
Of course, her film star parents must accept some responsibility for the widespread and not entirely healthy curiosity about their only child.
It is just not enough for Cruise and his wife Katie Holmes to shrug and insist that it’s Suri’s choice to regularly dress like a boiled-down Jezebel in her high heels, lipstick and clip-on earrings.
I do desperately wish that one of them would occasionally say; you’re not going out dressed like that, young lady.
Giving in to a daughter like Suri, if that is indeed what happens, is not something any parent should be proud of.
Agreed, the difficulty of instilling a sense of values into a child being brought up in a multi-million-pound household cannot be easy, but someone has to play bad cop.
Perhaps it would be more sensible for the Cruises to actively discourage such wilful character traits in their daughter, and dress the poor kid down, not up, up, up — as if every day was a prom day.
How will Suri ever understand the worth of things, or the grown-up pleasure of working and saving to have something lovely?
Unless you are Jeremy Clarkson, you only get one chance to be a child — and in this instance, Mum and Dad seem to be aiding and abetting Suri in a bid to throw her childhood away as quickly as possible.
Fashion magazines such as Glamour are complicit in this queasy, supersizing of Suri Cruise and other children just like her. Indeed, Miss Cruise is not the only innocent child to be flattered, if that is the right word, by their attentions.
Earlier this year, the Beckhams’ middle son, eight-year-old Romeo, made number 26 on the GQ Magazine best-dressed list.
Yes, a pathetic farce. And never mind how it must have made his overlooked, older brother Brooklyn feel, it points to the fact that expensive kids’ clothes are increasingly big business.
Forget the readers, magazine editors will do anything to please their real masters, the designers and brands who pack their glossy pages with advertisements.
And as more and more top fashion houses latch onto the rich kid market — designing ranges of grown-up clothes for the pampered offspring of the super-wealthy — they need show ponies such as Romeo and Suri Cruise more than ever before.
For Suri has become the Kate Moss of the Angelina Ballerina generation, a walking fashion billboard.
Her vast wardrobe is supposed to be worth more than £2 million, and she has a well- developed fondness for Burberry coats and Roger Vivier flat pumps.
Apparently, she already owns the entire Marc Jacobs kids’ range, including his silk chiffon £200 dresses. She makes Beatrice and Eugenie look like church mice.
No doubt Mummy has Suri’s name down for the first ever children’s fashion range from Lanvin, launching in November. The ultra-sophisticated company claims that the ‘super luxury’ collection for 4 to 10-year-old girls offers ‘a way to translate the universe of Lanvin ready-to-wear to the world of kids’.
Baby’s first razor-edged hems! Yes, it is terrifying. Yet for Suri and Romeo, their long walk down the catwalk of life is only just beginning.
No comments:
Post a Comment