Back-to-school forecast: artfully mismatched clothing

The lesson the fashion world is teaching parents during the back-to-school shopping season is: If you can't beat them, join them.

Children are going to wear their stripes with their dots and their florals with their plaids, and they really don't care if Mom says they don't match.

That doesn't mean they have to look like clowns, however, especially this year with many manufacturers offering coordinated mismatched looks.

Coordinated mismatched looks? Think a purple, two-tone dot turtleneck with a multicolored zigzag poncho and purple-and-aqua plaid skirt for girls, or red-white-and-blue plaid flannel shirt over a blue-and-white striped rugby shirt for boys.

"Parents should get on board and let kids express themselves," says Pilar Guzman, editor-in-chief of Cookie magazine,

Andrea Harmon, director of color and concept for The Children's Place, says that prints and patterns can even help some children, especially little ones who don't have a huge vocabulary, put their emotions into something visual.

"It's like there are no rules and that's what kids love and parents would do it, too, if they could," says Jose Abellar, Old Navy's vice president of design and trend.

The key to a busy outfit is the color combination, Harmon says. "The clothes are coordinated from a color perspective and that's a really important distinction."

Scale of the prints is another way to ramp up or tone down an outfit.

"If you have a large-scale stripe, you probably don't want to see it paired with something the same scale. It's just too busy."

Mixing tips

COLOR SCHEMES: Combine blues and greens or oranges and yellows. or mix a patterned item with pieces in solid colors that wouldn't normally seem complementary, such as a pink floral-pattern skirt with a solid blue T-shirt.

ONE PER OUTFIT: Allow one large-scale pattern per outfit. But a small dot or floral or a thin stripe can almost be treated like a solid.

MIX STYLES: Try an argyle sweater with rugged denim or a letterman sweater with a graphic T under it.

LOTS OF COLOR: A crazy pattern skirt with a lot of colors can be paired with multiple solid-colored tops.

SUBTLER CHOICES: Choose patterned socks or even a patterned backpack to look stylish without drawing too much attention. Printed leggings could be a compromise for cool mornings.