Child's Play: Lena Dunham and Jemima Kirke's First Appearance in Vogue

Think Lena Dunham is precocious now? She may have just landed her first Vogue cover at age 27, but, as revealed in the February issue, her first appearance in our pages dates back to when the Girls phenom was just eleven years old, hanging out with the likes of an equally young Stella Schnabel, stitching up her own Helmut Lang knockoffs and lamenting the fact that she couldn’t afford Jil Sander on her $5 weekly allowance. Yet in the picture that came out of that story, it’s Dunham’s other best pal since girlhood, Jemima Kirke, who steals the show, displaying a sense of style that, Plum Sykes writes, “makes Clueless look like Kmart.” Dunham told Vogue she wanted to grow up to be a fashion designer, while the young braces-and-barrettes-wearing Kirke simply wanted to be famous. Read the story, from March 1998, below.

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Their mothers form their wardrobes, and they spend recess planning splurges at Barneys. Plum Sykes closet-hops with the underage.

There she goes again. That girl who looks fabulous and seems to be everywhere that's worth going. Here she is in a beaten-up old cowboy coat, a fringed black skirt, and pretty high heels that I never laid eyes on before. She is style.

Miss Style, it turns out, is actually Miss Stella Schnabel, daughter of you-know-which artist and fourteen years old. Fourteen. I mean, I'd like to look like that, and I'm twice her age. Shouldn't she be wanting to look like me?

I swallow my pride. Quite obviously this is a girl from whom I could take some tips. I call to request a visit to her closet. I'm told Stella's at school and she'll call back. But I hear nothing. Stella's the leading light in a New York pack of fashion-conscious kids who are as likely to frequent Clementine as the classroom. I've spotted one at restaurant 147 after a film premiere, an angelic blonde perfectly turned out in slim white pants and a cloud-blue sweater that could be TSE. Annabelle's eleven. And she's happy to grant me an audience with her closet.

Annabelle and her mother, Ann Dexter-Jones, meet me at home with identical glowing feet. They are both in the luminous silver Nike sneakers that I've been wanting for ages but have declined to buy on the grounds that I could wear them for only a couple of weeks before they'd be passé. "Annabelle got them, and I loved them. So I asked her would she mind if I copied her and got some too," says Ann, wife of Mick Jones. (I feel better. It's not just me who wants to raid the kiddie closet.)

Annabelle is rummaging in her bedroom for her favorite items. She proudly holds up an A-line dress with a geometric sludge-green print, which she wears with high Mary Janes appliquéd with flowers. Chapin-educated Annabelle knows that this is a prized Prada look she has at her disposal. Names like Manolo, Gucci, Miu Miu trip off her tongue with the same fluency as her times table. How can this be?

Stella Schnabel still can't be reached for comment, so I turn to Tommy Hilfiger for answers. Tommy has turned dressing chic teenyboppers into big business: His boyswear wholesale sales rose from $54,050,000 in 1996 to $73,988,000 in 1997, and he's just launched a line of girlswear. Tommy talks about the fashion psychology of kids with the authority of a man who's spent millions finding out. "Kids want what adults want as long as it's not their parents'. They are so much more sophisticated than when I was growing up—they're computer literate, they carry portable phones, they're bombarded with cool media from MTV to Beverly Hills, 90210. They view themselves as young adults." Hilfiger is trying to keep his own children young as long as possible, but even he admits to trawling his daughter's closet for ideas. "She's twelve, and she really knows what's cool. Really baggy jeans, snowboard and skateboard gear are what she wants."

At the risk of running into freak territory, I find a seven-year-old who wants to introduce me to fashion. What I covet most from Michele Levbarg-Klein's perfectly ordered closet are her miniature J.P. Tod's in piebald cowskin and her Gucci loafers. "I had to have them," says her mother, Diane, executive V.P. of Missoni in America, who freely admits that her daughter's designer-stuffed closet is as much about her own desires as her offspring's. Michele has such a well-trained eye that while her mother is in Paris or Milan working, she takes her nanny to Barneys to stock up on orders for her mother. "Michele knows exactly which counter to go to for that perfect François Nars lipstick," says Diane as she maneuvers her way around Michele's gigantic stuffed elephant to show me a pint-size Sonia Rykiel coat she picked up in Paris.

Still on the trail of Stella Schnabel, I hear she's gone to St. Barth’s. Enough said.

"I never let my children wear Prada," says Lorraine Kirke, an interior designer whose daughters' style is causing a few waves in the fashion world. "Did I say they never wear Prada? Jemima went to school today in a Prada coat. Mine. I said to her, 'You're not wearing that to school.' She just said, 'Why not?' and that was that." Jemima is twelve, and her wardrobe makes Clueless look like Kmart. She saunters around her parents' apartment in a pair of seventies patchwork trousers worn low-slung, a cashmere sweater from a flea market, and Adidas sneakers. She's got a blue streak in her blonde hair and glitter on her eyelids. Very Fiona Apple. Sister Lola, seven, wanders in, clad in army pants, those luminous Nikes, and a khaki stripy top. She looks like something out of a hip Gap ad. (It turns out she is in a hip Gap ad.) These two are already learning the rules that get you on the Best Dressed List. "My daughters tell me Prada is too expensive," says Lorraine, who's also shod in the luminous Nikes. "They say, 'Would you have bought that if it wasn't Prada, Mom?' "

There's no Prada allowed in one downtown household. Laurie Simmons and Carroll Dunham's eleven-year-old daughter, Lena, has a street edge that could leave even Miss Schnabel feeling momentarily inadequate. "I tried to model this after Helmut Lang," says Lena, showing off a shift she sewed herself. Her fashion pronouncements are something you'd expect from a woman (at least) three times her age: "I tend not to go for trends. You can only wear them for two weeks . . . . I really like Jil Sander, but it's so expensive.... I find Calvin Klein really hard to respect because he's everywhere. I view him as a clothesmonger . . . . Manolo is really classy." Then she returns to preteen reality—"But five dollars a week [i.e., her allowance] isn't really enough. I'm just looking."

Stella calls. She's back and available for an appointment. Meanwhile, there's a sick rumor spreading from L.A. Supposedly mothers are having their children's hair colored to match their own. Apparently blondes don't want brunette offspring giving them away.

Chez Schnabel, mother Jacqueline is the picture of chic in perfect dark jeans and a white shirt. Lauren Hutton has come by for coffee. Stella, disarmingly sweet and polite, starts telling me about her clothes. "I never really shop. Lots of my clothes are my mother's, my friends', and gifts. Most of them are begged, stolen, or borrowed." Stella isn't talking for effect. I interrogate her about the fringed jacket and skirt, and it turns out the jacket is "an ancient Agnès Β.," and the skirt is a 1982 Yves Saint Laurent from her mother. A cropped cashmere cardigan with lace inserts was filched from Jemima Kirke's wardrobe, and a gathered white Communion dress scattered with roses was a present from her father that he bought in Spain. "I wore it to a ball in New York because it's funky and goofy."

Stella has to go. Balthazar? A play date at Barneys? No, she just has to study. She tells me she wants to be a writer and filmmaker when she grows up. Lena says she's a fashion designer in the making, and Jemima wants to be famous. One thing's already certain: They'll all make it onto the Best Dressed List.