Swing open the door, and behold a tableau that perfectly captures the tween aesthetic. The polka-dot chandelier. The zebra-print wallpaper. The lime green shag rug that pulls the look together — without being too matchy-matchy, as a pre-tween might have it.
But you can’t go in because the door doesn’t lead to a room. It leads to a locker. Specifically, Nola Storey’s locker at Rye Middle School in a New York suburb.
“I’ve had a bunch of people stop by my locker and say, ‘Wow, your locker’s so cool,’ ” Nola, 11, said.
Her mother, Kelly Jines-Storey, said the Lilliputian furnishings initially struck her as “kind of crazy.” But she added, “My second thought was, ‘Wow, I wish I would’ve thought of that.’ ”
At middle schools across the country, metal lockers that were long considered decorated if they had photos of friends or the teen heartthrob of the moment — Shaun Cassidy years ago, Justin Bieber today — have suddenly become the latest frontier in nesting.
Peek inside, and find lockers outfitted with miniature furry carpets, motion-sensor-equipped lamps that glow when the door opens, mirrors, decorative flowers, and magnetic wallpaper in floral and leopard-print patterns.
It is hard to say whether retailers have merely capitalized on or actually created demand among girls for the accessories. Either way, they are being embraced from Little Rock, Ark., where an owner of an upscale children’s boutique, the Toggery, said the demand for locker chandeliers had led to “snatching and grabbing” in the store’s normally genteel aisles, to the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where shoppers at Lester’s who failed to pounce quickly enough found themselves picking over the dregs before the school year even started.
“I feel so bad,” said Jenna Berman, an associate accessories buyer for the outposts of Lester’s in Manhattan and Westchester County and on Long Island, which are destinations for young trendsetters of means. “These little girls’ faces, they look so sad.”
If middle school had an emblem, it would be the locker, the first taste of privacy at school at a moment in life when that means a lot. At the same time, lockers are public, visible to anyone walking down the hallway, and therefore an ideal platform to convey one’s image. After all, your bedroom may be worthy of the PBteen catalog, but if the popular girls never see it, they will never know.
Not everyone, of course, is taken with the notion of dangling a $25 chandelier from a locker ceiling, particularly when many schools have required students to wear uniforms in an effort to blur divisions between rich and poor.
“What value is added to the school culture for some kids so privileged to have these types of things and other kids a couple lockers down to feel less than equal?” said Deborah Kasak, the executive director of the National Forum to Accelerate Middle-Grades Reform, an alliance of educators and others seeking to improve middle schools.
Rachel Simmons, a co-founder of the Girls Leadership Institute, a nonprofit group, and the author of “Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls,” said the trend “exemplifies the mixed messages that girls get about being powerful in the world,” adding: “Now you can’t just go to school and put your books in your locker between periods; it has to become a showcase for your design skills. You become a homemaker in the hallway.”
Wendi Aarons, a humor writer from Austin, Tex., needled the decorating phenomenon on a blog, The Mouthy Housewives. “Old gum. Rotten fruit. Broken hairbrushes. Smelly socks, dog-eared pictures of teenage werewolves,” she wrote. “That’s what a kid’s locker should have as its décor.”
Despite the causes for concern, the growing popularity of locker outfitting has fueled a mini-industry.
Christi Sterling, 50, and JoAnn Brewer, 49, friends and neighbors in Plano, Tex., got the idea for their company, LockerLookz, after decorating their daughters’ lockers at Prestonwood Christian Academy with fabric, paper and storage bins. “We got calls from the moms,” Mrs. Sterling said. “‘Where did y’all get this stuff? Cutest stuff! Where did you buy it?’ We said, ‘We made it.’ ”
Last year, LockerLookz products were sold in 80 stores, mostly in Texas. This year, they made their way into 1,200 stores across the country, including Lester’s.
Magna Card, a company based in DuBois, Pa., makes less expensive versions of locker decorations for sale in stores nationwide, including Target, and online. Among its products: locker wallpaper with butterflies or flowers ($7.99 for three sheets; the LockerLookz wallpaper is up to about $25 for four sheets) and chandeliers ($12.99) with lights that flash “in 7 cool colors!”
Paul Buckel, the president of Magna Card, said he hoped sales would double this year from last year.
“Parents don’t seem to skimp on tweens,” he said.
Some parents said that amid the anxiety of their children’s transition to middle school, and adolescence, they were grateful for any opportunity to pamper and hand-hold, even if it came in the form of a battery-operated light fixture dripping with faux crystals. After all, the middle school locker may be one of the last inner sanctums parents are allowed to penetrate.
“It’s a big deal going to middle school because you’re not in one classroom like you are in elementary school,” said Melissa Kane, whose daughter Hannah’s locker, adorned with purple-flowered wallpaper and a chandelier, was the talk of Karrer Middle School in Dublin, Ohio. “Doing her locker just helped me ease my nerves a little bit.”
In some places, students would be lucky to have a locker at all — some schools have done away with lockers to avoid problems like stealing and contraband stockpiling. At other schools, students get a locker before they can tie their shoes.
One Dallas mother, who did not want to be named lest she alienate fellow parents, said that when her daughter, a kindergartner, announced her desire for a locker chandelier, “My instinct, of course, was to just be like, ‘Over my dead body.’ ”
Those with decked-out lockers pointed to their utilitarian qualities. Hannah Kane, 11, said, “The mirror is really good if you’re coming back from lunch, to see if you have food in your teeth.” Nola Storey, of Rye, noted that locker rugs can cover up old chewing gum or graffiti.
Nola’s principal, Ann Edwards, said that she hoped she did not see “lots of money being spent and one-upping,” but that, for now, the décor was “harmless.”
“That they have a locker, that it’s theirs, that they put into it what they like,” Dr. Edwards said, “it’s one of the little rites of passage.”
