The $100 billion comeback of the American tween

I remember stepping into the mall as an 11-year-old with a sequined purse stuffed with pocket money. I’d pop into Claire’s to buy some watermelon Lip Smackers, then hit up Limited Too for baby Ts. Back home, there would be a Delia’s catalog waiting for me with ideas of how to style cargo pants. Or the latest issue of YM or Bop, full of quizzes to figure out which Spice Girl I was. (For the record, I was Posh.) In 1994, brands took tweens seriously as customers. They created a culture around them (girls, in particular), where not-quite-teenagers could tinker with the trappings of womanhood—lip gloss and slightly more fitted clothing—without straying out of their comfort zones. But over the past two decades, tween culture has been dismantled piece by piece. The mall (the tween’s natural habitat) began dying off, causing brands like Limited Too and Claire’s to struggle. Tween magazines closed, one after another, as part of the broader hollowing out of the media landscape. But in an unexpected twist, retailers appear to be rediscovering the power of the tween. Walmart and Target have recently launched collections targeting the demographic. The chic children’s retailer Maisonette creat…