School tells rich kids to stop wearing $350 Moncler beanies
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Hats off!
That’s what a middle school on the tony North Shore of Long Island is telling parents after students have been losing $350 headware from trendy brand Moncler.
Admins at Great Neck North Middle School are pleading for students to keep their designer duds at home, saying the kids keep losing them and freaking out.
“We understand that fashion is very important to our middle schoolers,” administrators wrote in a letter obtained by The Post. “However, we have had many students who have worn their Moncler Winter Pom Pom hats to school, and either lost or misplaced them.
“We need your help! Please try and redirect your middle schooler from wearing these hats to school,” the letter urged earlier this month.
French-Italian clothing company Moncler’s fur “pom pom” beanie costs up to $350 online, with kids’ sizes going for less.
The peeved principals noted they are wasting lots of time tracking down lost hats.
“It has consumed a great deal of our time trying to locate these missing hats, and it has been disruptive to the students’ focus and time as well,” they wrote.
Moncler’s popularity exploded after rapper Drake wore a puffer jacket with its logo — a red-and-navy stitched cockerel behind two peaks above the brand’s name — in his 2015 “Hotline Bling” music video. Celebs like Daniel Craig and Kim Kardashian have also been spotted sporting the label.
Like rival brand Canada Goose, Moncler sells adult parkas for over $1,000 a pop.
Schools on the other side of the Atlantic have started cracking down on the brands.
A high school in Wirral, England, banned Moncler, Canada Goose and Pyrenex in November. It said it didn’t want poorer kids who couldn’t afford the designer duds to feel marginalized, according to the Daily Mail.
British parents praised the move as a way to prevent bullying.
But on the North Shore, most parents turned their noses up.
At dismissal time Thursday, one mom called the recent letter from admins “silly.”
“I think there’s other things that should warrant parents’ attention,” Elissa Siony said as she waited in a black Cadillac Escalade for her eighth-grade daughter. “If they lose it and freak out, they freak out. I don’t know why they have to send an email about it.”
Another parent called the hat issue a “Great Neck problem” — nodding to the wealthy socioeconomic status in the village, where the median home value is nearly $1.3 million, according to Zillow.com.
“It’s ridiculous,” the mom, who declined to give her name, said of the school’s request. “If my kids had [the hats], I’d let them wear them. “It’s their prerogative.”
Ying Xiong agreed with the letter.
“They don’t need to have those expensive hats,” she said as she waited outside the school in a white Mercedes Benz for her son.
Xiong, who is of Chinese descent, chalked the tiff up to American materialism.
“It’s part of American culture that kids feel they need to have such expensive things,” she said. “My kids, they would need to get those hats on their own.”
Another mom who declined to give her name said she agrees the hats are disruptive, but disagreed with the school’s intervention.
“I think at this age when the kids are so impressionable it’s important to limit status symbols,” she said. “I thought it was sad that instead of teaching kids something important, they’re hunting down winter accessories.”
Principal Gerald Cozine and Public Information Specialist Colleen Bowler did not return messages left by The Post.
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