VOA慢速英语:新时代女孩服装设计打破店铺风格

Many little girls like flowers, watching butterflies andriding ponies. A lot of them also like cars, robots and spaceships. But mostgirls’ clothing only has pictures of flowers, butterflies or ponies.

Two mothers decided to make clothes that are more representative of all thethings that little girls are, and do, and love.

Six-year-old Bella loves to build houses and play with cars.

"I like Barbie also dinosaurs."

So her dress has pictures of dinosaurs on it.

"I need a train to put on the train track."

Her friend Penny enjoys making things with building blocks.

"I like to make trucks."

The four-year old also likes the colors pink and purple, and the dress she iswearing. Cathy Tramontana is Penny’s mother.

"She really enjoys wearing it. It's bright, comfortable, and unique."

Penny’s clothing is unusual because it has images in the shape of themathematical symbol pi. Cathy Tramontana says the design opens the door todiscussions on mathematics.

"We haven't found this type of dress in the store."

The pi and dinosaur dresses are from a new girl's clothing line called PrincessAwesome. Rebecca Melsky set up the business. She says its products forgirls have some designs normally found on boys' clothes.

"I think that a girl wearing a dress with science on it. She's telling the worldwhen she's out that this is something she's interested in. She can love girlythings and also love science. It tells that science is just as much for girls as it is for boys."

It all started two years ago when Rebecca Melsky was hoping to buy clothingfor her two-year-old, who refused to wear anything but a dress. Ms. Melskybought pajamas meant for boys because her daughter also liked robots,trucks and spaceships.

"One day I would walk out past through the girls' section of the store, I thoughtto myself I wish they'd make one of those cute dresses that also have a roboton it or a dinosaur because she will wear that. She will love that. And I thoughtsomeone should do that. Maybe I should do that."

Her friend Eva St. Clair believed she should, and their business was born. The two women got together on Saturdays.

They used fabrics with images of trucks, airplanes, pirates and atoms. Theyalso created art dresses based on works by Van Gogh and Monet.

"Usually Rebecca and I would be down in my basement. Rebecca would cutand I would stitch. And we got to where we could do about four in an hour."

The women sold the first 70 dresses they made at a local market. So thefounders decided to expand their business online. Their products sold verywell there, too.

"These sold out so fast that I could not make them fast enough. We decided it was time to figure out how to go into a factory."

So they turned to a Kickstarter crowd-funding campaign.

Crowdfunding is a way to raise money from a large number of people over theInternet to support a project. The women met their goal of $35,000 within daysand raised more than $215,000 in donations.

"Our biggest challenge is going to be how do we expand as rapidly as peopleseem to want us to."

The founders hope Princess Awesome will expand into products for girls of allages and all interests.

I’m Marsha James.

VOA’s June Soh prepared this story. Marsha James wrote it for LearningEnglish. George Grow was the editor.

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Words in this Story

discussion – n. the act of talking about something with another person or agroup of people

fabric – n. woven or knitted material, cloth

stitch – n. a piece of thread that is passed through a piece of material with aneedle