Nov. 3 (Bloomberg) -- When Sydney Ramsden complained she didn't have a purse for her 13th birthday dinner at Manhattan's `21' Club last year, her mother bought her a black nylon bag -- a $230 Prada ``pochette.''
``It went perfectly with my outfit,'' says Sydney, an eighth-grader at a private, Upper East Side girls' school who has since added a pink Prada pocketbook to her accessory wardrobe. For Christmas, she wants Louis Vuitton.
Teenagers are the new kids on the block for the luxury stores on Madison and Fifth avenues, where retailers pay the world's highest rents. Fueled by mom's and dad's credit cards, girls are snapping up $1,500 bags and $480 cashmere tracksuits, helping drive record sales for companies such as Prada SpA of Milan and Paris-based LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA.
The young customers include daughters of Wall Street bankers and lawyers, set to splurge into 2006 as their parents collect more than $17.5 billion in year-end bonuses from firms such as Merrill Lynch & Co., the biggest U.S. brokerage, and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., this year's No. 1 mergers adviser.
For Sydney's 13th birthday, Susan and Dan Ramsden also bought a $250 Juicy Couture argyle sweater and a $295 chunky silver necklace from New York-based Tiffany & Co., the biggest U.S. chain for high-end jewelry. Accessories for their daughter, who wears a uniform to school, run about $1,500 a year, says Susan Ramsden, 41.
Dan Ramsden,40, is a managing director at Near Earth LLC, which does satellite industry investment banking for San Francisco-based Thomas Weisel Partners LLC. Susan Ramsden is a former buyer for AnnTaylor Stores Corp., whose own favorite brands are Prada and Tod's SpA, an Italian maker of bags and loafers soled with rubber spikes.
`A Good Life'
``It doesn't matter that they are only 16, 18 or 23,'' says Patricia Edwards, who helps manage $6.4 billion in assets, including retailers' shares, at Wentworth, Hauser & Violich in Seattle. ``They think they should be able to have a good life.''
For LVMH, the world's largest luxury-goods maker and purveyor of purses with the ``LV'' monogram, sales rose 12 percent in the third quarter, while Prada's revenue increased 23 percent in the year's first half. Department stores that appeal to upper-income consumers reported an average 6.6 percent jump in monthly same- store sales through September, more than triple the 2 percent rise for all department stores, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers.
Bergdorf Goodman and Saks Fifth Avenue sell clothing, bags and cosmetics by manufacturers such as LVMH and Paris-based Chanel SA at their mid-Manhattan stores. Texas Pacific Group of San Francisco and Warburg Pincus LLC, New York, acquired Bergdorf's parent, Dallas-based Neiman Marcus Group Inc., in a $5.1 billion takeover last month. Saks Fifth Avenue is owned by Birmingham, Alabama-based Saks Inc.
Junior Jackies
Top European fashion houses are catering to the younger set. Italy's Valentino made Jacqueline Kennedy's gown for her 1968 wedding to Aristotle Onassis and dressed Princess Grace of Monaco. Now, Valentino Fashion Group SpA has a line called R.E.D. that was featured in September's Teen Vogue.
Some girls are so eager for the French and Italian goods that they call Europe to beat U.S. waiting lists. Samantha Sussman, 15, acquired her $900 Chloe Paddington purse by asking her aunt to pick it up on a trip to Paris.
A 10th-grader at an Upper East Side girls' school, Sussman has a Vuitton bag she received from her grandmother for her junior-high graduation and a quilted Chanel handbag, a hand-me- down from her mother.
``It's a classic thing,'' she says.
Juicy Couture, a unit of Liz Claiborne Inc. that sells a ``socialite'' pink cashmere tracksuit, has added $900 purses styled for customers as young as 18. Juicy Couture-clad Barbie dolls also are available, at about $100 for a set of two.
`No Doubt'
``High-school kids love Juicy, no doubt about it,'' says Michelle Sanders, vice president and fashion director of New York-based Liz Claiborne's Juicy Couture. ``They're probably our more vocal customers.''
At Coach Inc., the largest U.S. seller of luxury leather goods, the average bag costs $250, with 18- to 24-year-olds accounting for about 10 percent of sales, spokeswoman Andrea Resnick says. New York-based Coach's profit jumped 54 percent in the quarter that ended Oct. 1.
``It used to be that the mother was carrying the high-end bag,'' says Rebecca Resnick, senior accessories editor at Teen Vogue in Manhattan. ``Now, the mothers and the daughters are carrying them.''
Target Audience
The magazine, a spinoff of the 113-year-old fashion bible Vogue, was started by New York-based Conde Nast Publications Inc. in 2003. The target audience: girls from age 12 to 20. Fashion advertising pages jumped 55 percent in the year through September, including double-page spreads for Tod's and London- based Burberry Group Plc.
Manhattan teens are also taking cues from celebrities such as the 19-year-old Olsen twins, Mary-Kate and Ashley, who moved to the city last year to attend New York University. Mary-Kate's style -- dubbed ``dumpster chic'' for its baggy pants, oversized sweaters and vintage items from secondhand stores -- includes a cup of coffee and a $1,500 bag from Balenciaga, a fashion house that's part of Paris-based PPR SA's Gucci Group.
Along with Balenciaga, adolescents are hot for goods bearing the names of Milan-based Armani SpA and Gucci, according to a ``brand-love index'' compiled by Harrison Group, a Waterbury, Connecticut, market research firm.
The two fashion labels joined Microsoft Corp., Apple Computer Inc. and Abercrombie & Fitch Inc. to round out the five brands with the biggest increases in popularity from 2003, the firm said after an October poll of 500 people age 13 to 24.
Materialism
``Materialism is way up this year,'' says Jim Taylor, a Harrison Group vice chairman. Fewer respondents than two years ago answered ``I want to make the world a better place for everyone,'' he says.
Emily Weiss, an NYU student who grew up in Wilton, Connecticut, researched her recent purchase of a $1,000 blue, soft leather Balenciaga for months and grabbed it three days after the fringed bag arrived at the company's 22nd Street store.
``I'm very particular about accessories,'' says the 20- year-old, who says her mother and father paid the bill. She became serious about purses in the ninth grade with a $300 Louis Vuitton shoulder bag and later carried a duffle-like Vuitton and an Yves St. Laurent carryall, she says.
``I buy one splurge bag a year,'' says Weiss, a studio-art major who lives in an apartment on the Lower East Side. ``That's how much you can ask your parents for before they think you're insane.''
--With reporting by Andria Cheng in New York. Editors: Wiegold, Todd.