Meera’s Missoni

If you somehow managed to miss last week’s Missoni for Target craze, you can read about it here, here, here, or any other hundreds of places online. I was aware of it (who wasn’t?), and had absolutely no intention of getting anywhere near caught up in it. But I had to make a Target run on Thursday for a bunch of errands, and since Meera was home last week, I took her with me. We walked in the front door of Target at 8:45 am, after having dropped K & O off at school. Given that this was just about exactly 48 hours post-Missoni-launch, in the back of my mind I was definitely curious if our local Target was going to have any Missoni left. Meera, on the other hand, had no clue about Missoni (rightly so— she’s THREE). We grabbed a cart, I put Meera in the kid’s seat, and started digging in my bag for my shopping list. Before I could even get the list out I hear Meera: “Mama! Mama! Look!!!! Looooook!” She’s screeching with a high pitched voice as she does only when she’s most extremely excited. “What?!” I say, and I look up to her pointing enthusiastically and practically jumping out of the cart. I look toward where she’s pointing. And there, set up right at the entrance area to the Target, is a metal rack with about 10 or 12 random pieces of clothing hanging on it, and a hand-written sign taped above it (someone had scrawled with a Sharpie on a piece of paper) that read: “MISSONI – what we have left.” I could not believe it. Thinking that there was no way this could possibly be happening with my THREE year old, I looked back at Meera and said, “What Meera?” She’s wildly pointing and trying to get out of the cart, “Mama! Look! Look! I LOVE IT!” I help her out of the cart and she literally runs to the rack. There are random pieces of Missoni— a size 10 girls jacket; a pair of women’s size XL knit tights; a size 18 month jumpsuit; and…  believe it or not…  a size XS (4-5) toddler girls’ poncho sweater…. which Meera is enthusiastically pulling at, jumping up and down, trying to get off the rack (NO JOKE). “What? You like this?” I say. She’s never seen Missoni in her life (we don’t even have TV, so she’s never even seen a Target ad). “Yeeeeeeeeeeeeees!” she squeals as she tries to pull it off the hanger. ‘Oh-My-God’ I think to myself, ‘what-is-this-about?!’ I helped her try it on and she ran to the closest mirror she could find. Standing behind her I watched as she admired herself completely. And then she looked up at me through the mirror, smiled shyly, and said, “Mama please can I have it?” I could not resist. She wore it through the rest of the store, took it off only for it to be run through the register so I could pay for it, and then insisted on putting it right back on. She wore it the whole next day, including to a doctor’s appointment that morning, and to a party we went to that night. And she’s been wearing it a lot ever since. Meera’s Missoni.