December 08, 2007

Teenage is the time when children begin to think about their physical appearance. As this is the most beautiful phase of life, when children say goodbye to their childhood and enter a completely new phase of their lives: the youth, the teenagers’ fanciful world urges them to look beautiful and this desire to look attractive leads them to adopt latest trends in costumes, accessories, hairstyle etc.

Trends keep on changing and children continue to adopt them so that they can look more fashionable and up-to-date in friendly get-togethers and become the favourites of all. For family functions such as birthday parties, marriages or engagement parties, teenagers prefer to wear traditional costumes and try to look more conventional, whereas, in friends’ parities or casual get-togethers, they like to adopt modern trends.

Instead of randomly discussing the popular trends among teenagers, let’s take an in-depth look at them.

Girls in this day and age are wearing loose embroidered kurtis with jeans decorated with colourful beads, pearls ad crystals. Besides this new trend of wearing kurtis with jeans, conventional shalwar qameez attire is still in but with a lot of modifications with plain shalwar being replaced by Patiala style shalwar Caprice, pants or shalwar with short and embroidered cuffs.

Boys occasionally wear shalwar qameez with waist coat, embroidered kurta with shalwar, while western three piece suit, which includes pant, collared shirt, coat and tie, is limited to formal functions like wedding of some close family member. Casual attires include jeans and T-shirts, kurti, or pant and shirt.

A beautifully designed dress will not look appealing if the footwear is not according to its standard. In Pakistan, what is normally observed is that girls instead of following trends, prefer to wear the footwear in which they feel comfortable and it’s a symbol of being sensible as most of the times, high heels or extremely delicate sandals cause unnecessary trouble, especially if worn for long hours. But it doesn’t mean that high heals are totally out of fashion in this part of the world. Many young girls wear pencil heels in parties and friendly get-togethers. Flat shoes and wide heels are the favourites of college girls, while during picnics some also prefer to wear stripped slippers. Slippers with beads and stone work are also in. Boys on the other hand casually wear leather slippers or joggers with jeans, while leather sandals are best suited with western three-piece attire. For traditional functions, many boys and girls love to wear embroidered khusas.

Nowadays, beauty parlours and salons are seen in every nook and corner and not only girls but boys also seem to be keen to look good and pay a lot of attention to personal grooming. Latest craze in personal care among girls and boys is hair dying with stylish haircuts instead of simple hairstyles. While girls are opting for layered and stepped haircut with highlights of different shades, boys on the other hand are having buzzed, spikey, mini faux hawks or traditional short styles and not to mention that most of them drive their inspirations from film stars.

Besides hairstyling, skin care is also an important part of personal care and teenagers are mostly inspired by the fanciful advertisements of beauty products and tend to adopt all possible ways to have a beautiful face free of pimples and blemishes. Physical fitness is another hottest craze among teenagers and a lot of girls and boys regularly attend aerobics or yoga classes to keep them physically fit and smart. While girls prefer to have hourglass figure, boys make extraordinary efforts to acquire macho man looks and spend hours in gymnasiums for body building.

When it comes to accessories, most girls pay attention to jewellery, purses, hair-adornment stuff and sunglasses (if they are going out in the daytime). Same is the case for boys, who also love to wear chains, bracelets, earrings… ladies purse is replaced by wallets in boys’ case, boys also love to wear designer sunglasses, and last but not the least, nowadays, stylish mobile phones have also become a part of adornment and boys and girls like to use different coloured mobile phone cases to match with their dresses.

Beads and dough jewellery is very much adored by girls these days. This jewellery is available in markets but can be made at home too. As gold and diamond sets are not very suitable for teenagers because they can’t take good care of them especially in crowded places, so a wonderful replacement of gold and diamond is colourful artificial jewellery. The sets are available in various colours so that the girls can match them with their dresses and their affordable prices eliminate the risk of their misplacement. Boys, these days are more fond of jewellery than girls. Many boys seem wearing necklace with a pendant, beaded necklace, neck chain, earrings, bracelets and rings in different styles. These items are available in gold and silver too but the affordable rates of artificial jewellery have replaced gold and silver items.

Besides jewellery, teenagers are also crazy about other items such as matching purses and wallets, watches, cell phones in beautiful cases and sunglasses. Instead of wearing expensive original designer glasses, many teens seem wearing replica sunglasses because they look just like original and the prices are also affordable.

In handbags, girls have more choices as they can carry simple leather bags as well as beautifully embroidered handmade purses while boys (as they don’t have many options) casually use leather wallets to carry their pocket money and leather bags for college and schools.

Well, an article on youth trends could go on and on but I will finish it here with a piece of advice: Being trendy is OK but besides being fashionable and up-to-date, the more important thing is to become good human being and a good human being is the one who tries to live a simple and modest life. If you want to keep yourself stylish, there’s no harm in it but you should also keep a watch on your behaviour. I mean never show-off your wealth by spending extraordinary on your personal grooming and also never try to degrade those who can’t afford these things.