Lifestyle2_files/Brat pack

37/1ST
Daily Mail, Monday, June 27, 2005
**
LIFE style
Page 37
The brat pack
Meet Marissa. She’s got wardrobes of
designer clothes (though she’s still at
school). She’s got a personal number
plate (though she can’t drive).
She’s got her own flat
(bought by her parents).
And there are plenty
more 16-year-olds
just like her . . .
Picture: JASON ROBINSON
L
OUNGING on a £4,000
bespoke sofa in her central
Manchester apartment,
Marissa Mortimer points a
manicured finger in the
direction of the personalised car number plate hanging on
the wall. It reads G11RLY.
‘I saw it on a website and my dad
bought it for me,’ says the 16-year-old
from Alderley Edge, the affluent Cheshire
village. ‘Now all I have to do is get a car and
learn to drive.’
As Marissa is proud to point out, she really
is the girl with everything: a wardrobe full of
designer clothes, shoes and bags; her own
£300,000 luxury apartment in the city centre
where she and her friends stay at weekends;
the promise of a brand-new Mini Cooper S
(or her preferred option, a Mercedes SLK)
for her 17th birthday. Not bad for a middleclass teenager studying for her GCSEs.
But then, Marissa is typical of a new brat
The girl with everything: Marissa Mortimer with one of her mother, Julia’s, cars
By Claire Coleman
pack — a generation of pampered teens
who are given everything they desire by
their cash-rich, time-poor parents.
According to a recent report by the Royal
Bank of Scotland, the number of seriously
wealthy teenagers is on the increase.
Children are reaping the rewards of having
dual-income parents.
Egg, the online bank, has dubbed this
privileged group the Mass Affluent Kids
because it is no longer a phenomenon
confined to the ‘super-rich’ few. Egg estimates
that there are now more than 18,000 young
people from middle-class backgrounds who,
thanks to Mummy and Daddy, have a disposable income of more than £50,000 a year.
Marissa admits to spending an astonishing £4,000 a month on designer clothes.
‘I have my own credit card on my mother’s
account,’ she explains. No wonder she
counts Prada jackets, Joseph cashmere and
Diane von Furstenberg dresses among her
prize possessions.
And that’s not to mention her sizeable
collection of handbags (‘Five Prada, three
Gucci, a couple of Diors and some Lulu
Guinness and Louis Vuitton as well’).
Her shoe collection rivals that of many a
thirtysomething fashionista — there are ten
pairs of Jimmy Choos (at £450 a pair) and an
£800 pair of Dior Rasta boots, which she
guiltily admits she has worn only once.
Her parents, Annie and James, both 43, were
brought up in far more modest circumstances. After meeting aged 15 at the local
comprehensive, they married ten years later,
had two children (Marissa’s brother Simon is
18) and set up a property business.
It was hard work but worth it, they surely
reasoned, if it meant they could give their
children the best start in life.
Clothes and shoes aside, Marissa has
enjoyed an excellent education at a co-ed
private school where she has just taken ten
GCSEs. But even she can see that her
pampered upbringing has come at a price.
Much of the first eight years of her life was
spent with a nanny.
‘I used to really look forward to the family
outings to the park at weekends, or
Christmas when they made a point of
taking three days off,’ she says.
‘Now it’s different. Mum took early retirement four years ago, and Dad can take a bit
more time off. We’ll all be spending the
summer at our place in Spain — it’s going to
be great.’
Finally, it seems, the Mortimer family is
making up for lost time, and they certainly
have the money to do that in style.
But while it’s understandable that parents
should want the best for their family, a
childhood of presents and possessions
rather than play and time together can
have a serious impact on some teens, says
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38/1ST
Page 38
LIFE style
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Professor Suniya Luthar. The clinical and developmental psychologist at Columbia University
Teachers College is the author of Privileged
But Pressured? A Study Of Affluent Youth,
and has discovered that many such children
have low self-esteem.
‘Wealth in itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing,’
she says. ‘The trouble comes when material
things begin to take the place of other more
important things in life. All too often, cash-rich,
time-poor parents use money and material
possessions in place of spending time with
their children.’
She also found a link, in some cases, with
anxiety and depression.
‘Our studies show affluent children, particularly girls, tend to be more vulnerable to
depression, anxiety and substance abuse
than those from modest families,’ she adds.
‘They often feel that because of the privileges
they enjoy in comparison with most of society,
they have no right to feel sad or depressed.’
Marissa, for one, really hates it when people
tell her she has an easy life.
‘I have my own stresses, even if they’re not that
important,’ she says. But by the same token, she
makes no apologies for the fact that she is
materialistic. Her plan, once her GCSE results
arrive is to leave school and open a shoe shop
with her mother. ‘I don’t see the point of going to
university because I’ve never been that academic,’ she explains. ‘And my parents are totally
supportive of my decision to start a career rather
than continue studying.
‘I still live with Mum and Dad, but now my flat
has been renovated, I am spending more time
there. My parents pay for everything so I don’t
have to worry about a mortgage or bills. My
brother’s got a flat in the same block, so he’s
nearby.’
Veronica Tarasidis, an only child, is another
super-wealthy teen. An entire floor of her
parents’ three-storey house in Highgate, North
London, is devoted to her suite of rooms — sitting
room, bathroom and bedroom, plus five
wardrobes bursting with designer labels from
Chloe and Miu Miu to Gucci and Roberto Cavalli.
A black Mercedes SLK sits in the drive, a
present for her 17th birthday — though she has
yet to take a single driving lesson. And she will
spend the summer on a yacht in Monaco.
‘I know I am lucky that I will never have to
support myself. I wouldn’t know what to do if
all this was suddenly taken away from me,’ she
says. Her enviable lifestyle is funded by her
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father, Alexander, 39, who owns a string of
chocolate factories and spends a lot of his time
working abroad.
Her mother Tanya, 39, an engineer, no longer
works, but as a young child, Veronica was
looked after by a nanny. At the age of 11 she
was sent to board at Roedean.
‘My mother would come and see me at weekends and she would always bring me loads of
presents. I think she felt she had to spoil me to
make up for the fact that she wasn’t around,’
says the teenager, who now attends a private
sixth form college in West London.
V
ERONICA insists that this didn’t
bother her. ‘I’ve realised that
when your parents are around,
you take them for granted. By
not seeing them, I realised how
much I loved and missed them. I know that my
father works as hard as he does for my benefit,
so that makes it easier.’
‘I know I’m a lot more privileged than my
parents ever were at my age. My grandfather
was in the military and so my mother went to
school wherever he was posted. And my father
also had a modest upbringing. I’m
very aware that the money I have
was earned rather than inherited.’
And, of course, she has her
£1,500 monthly allowance to
distract her from the fact she sees
her father only every few months.
Despite this, Veronica appears
to have a hard time keeping track
of her possessions.
‘I lose the nicest of things,’ she
admits. ‘I had a beautiful £3,000
diamond Technomarine watch,
which took me about six months
to save up for, but I had it for only
three months before I lost it.
‘I leave stuff on buses or lend
things to people and forget. I’ve
lost a beautiful fur coat, a Louis
Vuitton bag and a diamond ring in
the past couple of years.’
But then there’s Daddy working
hard so they can be replaced.
Veronica’s friend, Lucy Kingsley,
16, enjoys a monthly allowance of
£500. And much of this goes on a
hectic social life. ‘I eat out at least
two nights a week and when I’m
at college I always have lunch out,
too. The bill can easily come to
£200 for four of us,’ she says.
Then of course, there are the
post-dinner drinks — not cheap if
you choose to drink in the sort of
establishments that serve £10
Daily Mail, Monday, June 27, 2005
cocktails and bottles of champagne. ‘There’s nowhere in
London really that’s cheap but I
find it’s easier to get served in the
more expensive bars and clubs.
They are less likely to suspect
you’re under 18 as they tend to
attract an older, wealthier crowd.’
Spending the evening this way is
infinitely preferable to going
back to an empty house. Such
teenagers are the modern-day
equivalent of latchkey kids — with
their own income to distract them
when their parents are not around.
‘My parents sometimes work
late into the evening so I go out
with friends instead,’ says Lucy.
‘There are lots of good restaurants near our house. I’m always
surprised when I get my bank
statement at the end of the
month and see how much I’ve
spent eating out.’
She is quick to stress how grateful she is that her parents, George,
62, a company treasurer, and
Caroline, 51, who runs a market
research company, have worked
so hard to ensure that she and her
older brothers didn’t have to
attend the local state school. But
it did mean her formative years
were spent with au pairs.
When she was eight, Lucy’s
mother set up her business and,
though she was working from
home, rarely had spare time.
‘Every now and then, Mum
would take me out for the day and
spend far more on me than she
normally would. I’m sure it’s
because she felt guilty.’
Lucy prides herself on her
so-called independence, but only
time will tell how well she — and
the growing number of teens like
her — will cope once they leave
home and try to run their own lives.
For wealthy parents, lavishing
cash rather than time on their
children is a hard habit to break,
especially as it goes some way to
relieving their guilt at never
seeing their family.
But as Professor Suniya Luthar
found: ‘From the children’s
perspective, having access to this
sort of disposable income may
mean that their value system is
shifted, and possessions can
begin to take priority over everything to such an extent that
self-esteem hinges excessively on
what you own rather than who
you are.’