Tween Eye for Design

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Teenage taste is notoriously fickle. To divine trends, designers at PBteen troll the malls and even the extreme-surfing shops. "You just dive into all those places. You watch teenagers," says product-development executive Sandra Stangl. BombayKids designers travel as far as India and China for ideas, but they also watch MTV. It's all very secretive. Ask about next year's colors, and Farley at BombayKids demurs, "We'd have to shoot you if we told you."

Savvy teenagers like Ellen Knapek, 15, a sophomore at Ursuline Academy in Dallas, tend not to buy a ready-made decor from just one vendor. They like to shop around. When her mom remarried in August, Ellen got a new room as part of the deal. "Mom told me I could do whatever I wanted, within reason," says Ellen. Her light-aqua room has a surfboard headboard from PBteen, pastel paper lamps from Pier 1 and a surfer-theme picture frame from Old Navy. Not everything is from a chain store. Ellen found a hula-girl lamp at a Galveston surf shop. Stepdad Terry Letteer approves of the overall look but admits there was a price: "My son got a big-screen TV for moving."

How, exactly, did kids gain such influence and financial clout in their homes? James McNeal, a former Texas A&M professor who is considered the godfather of kids' marketing, notes that between 1950 and 1990, households went from being a patriarchy with Dad in charge, to a matriarchy with Mom in charge, to — you guessed it — a "filiarchy" with kids calling the shots. Or at least co-directing them. Younger parents, especially, are letting their kids control the decorating. "Gen X parents are more collaborative, less me-centered than the boomers. They engage their children in discussions about purchases," says Tim Coffey, co-author of The Great Tween Buying Machine.

Parents who don't want to overindulge their kids' inner Martha would do well to remember that imagination is free and often in ample supply in the young brain. When the trend watchers at Look-Look searched its youth network for cool room ideas, they found 17-year-old Sara from Los Angeles, who decorated every inch of her bedroom walls with graffiti. First it was random quotations and dates she needed to remember, and then she began inviting friends to adorn the walls with excerpts from favorite songs and books. "My bedroom is both a representation of me and has bits and pieces of all my friends," she says. It may not be a parent's idea of decorating, but it's one of a kind — and it didn't cost a dime.