Small is beautiful: kids on the catwalk

Kids on the catwalk? It was inevitable, really, considering we’ve already got ten-year-old Romeo Beckham winking at us from Burberry billboards and that four-month-old bundle of pudgy deliciousness Marialucas Boscono gazing out from the latest Givenchy campaign, in the arms of her Italian supermodel mother Mariacarla.

Last month saw London’s first fashion show devoted entirely to pre-teens. The inaugural £100-a-seat Global Kids Fashion Week, held at the Freemasons’ Hall in Covent Garden, was hosted by the online children’s fashion website AlexandAlexa, which sells Dolce & Gabbana dresses (with matching bloomers) for £239 and Burberry cardigans for £110. The show offered sartorially conscious children (and their similarly swanky mothers) previews of the A/W 2013 kidswear collections from the likes of Marc Jacobs, Ralph Lauren and Stella McCartney, with plenty of champagne (for the yummy mummies), popcorn and free manicures for all.

The UK childrenswear industry is now worth £6 billion a year, and GKFW is at its most glamorous end. As the lights went down, up went the crystal-encrusted iPads of the likes of Jodie and Jemma Kidd, Jools Oliver and Charlotte Tilbury, their children on their knees. Deee-Lite’s ‘Groove is in the Heart’ blasted out as the mini models strutted and cartwheeled their way down the catwalk in a 20-minute show in front of the 500-strong crowd, finishing with a confetti shower worthy of an X Factor final.

Not content with his spectator status, one five-year-old stormed the stage just before the finale.‘What do you expect? I’m raising Zoolander,’ sighed his mother.