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Jonah Wood already knows what he wants to wear on the first day of school: one of his eight Lacoste shirts, his Free City hoodie, his new Gap jeans and a new pair of black Ferrari Puma running shoes. Ballpark total: a cool $400.

“I do like brands,” says Jonah, 11. He is clad in Under Armour shorts, a label favoured by athletes. “I see people wearing different brands and, if I like that brand, I try to look for that type of clothing.”

His mother, Kathie Wood, figures she'll spend about $500 on clothing for Jonah before he even steps into a classroom on Sept. 8. She's heading to Toronto's tony Yorkville to shop with him at upscale Diesel and TNT Blu stores and also stop at Roots and the Gap.

“People will comment to me because I have only boys: ‘You don't have to worry with them with clothes.' I tell them they're absolutely dead wrong.”

Tween girls have grabbed the fashion spotlight over the past decade, with chains and brands aimed at the seven-to-14 crowd. Now retailers are beefing up inventory for a new fashionisto: “The tween boy is the new girl,” says retail consultant Kaileen Millard-Ruff.

“Twenty or 30 years ago it wasn't socially acceptable for males to be vain,” says Millard-Ruff, who has worked for chains such as Sears Canada and the Bay. “Now that's changed. And it's changing for tween boys, too.”

This back-to-school season – the second-busiest shopping period after the holidays – merchants are ramping up inventories with an eye to the tween-boy segment, especially those in the 11 to 12 range.

It's a segment whose sales have grown 1.2 per cent over the past four years to represent 13 per cent of the $2.5-billion annual children's wear market, while sales in the total kid's clothing sector slipped 0.6 per cent, Zellers executives say. Parents are often ready to lavish their boys with the latest fashions that they wouldn't bother to buy for themselves, Millard-Ruff says.

“There's no question that boys are making their own fashion decisions earlier than ever,” Lesya McQueen, vice-president of apparel at Wal-Mart Canada, says in an e-mail. “Tween boys who used to be dragged in as mom's tag-along are now leading the charge into the fashion aisles. We see this ‘kidfluence' taking over around the age of 11.”

The preteens emulate celebrities ranging from skateboarder Tony Hawk to hockey pro Marian Hossa to the Jonas Brothers boy band. Their role models appear constantly on YouTube and television or in video games. And tween boys are increasingly drawn to “style-oriented” retail brands such as Hollister, Tommy Hilfiger and Mexx rather than Wal-Mart, Zellers and Old Navy, according to new data from Youthology, a marketing and research firm.

But the challenges aren't deterring Zellers, Wal-Mart and other mainstream retailers from bolstering – and updating – their preteen fashions for fall. U.S.-based Aeropostale, a purveyor of inexpensive teen clothing, recently rolled out a new chain called P.S. From Aeropostale, catering to tweens. In the first store in New York, a floor-length mirror with a built-in camera allows a shopper to take his own pictures and see them displayed immediately on screens; text messages such as “You look GR8 :)” are printed on the wall.

Zellers has doubled its inventory for tween boys this back-to-school season from two years earlier and just launched the X-Games line of action sportswear, says Debbie Ford, a vice-president at the chain. Ford says X Games is inspired by the popular Billabong and Quiksilver brands but at less than half the price (T-shirts: $13, jeans: $30).

In its 725 line, discount behemoth Wal-Mart has introduced skater looks (a $10 black hoodie with graffiti-style white and red script across the front), a Jonas Brothers look ($15 skinny jeans and $12 plaid shirts) and a preppy look (a two-piece George “fooler” – a shirt set with long-sleeve T-shirt covered by collared shirt rolled and buttoned at the cuff for $10)

The Source, a skateboarding and snowboarding chain in Alberta, has doubled its inventory in clothing categories for preteen boys over the past two years – and almost doubled those sales, says Alexandra Rasko, a manager at one of the six stores.

The key is stocking the right brands, such as Circa, DC and Volcom, she says. “A lot of times kids come in and they know what brand they want to wear and, if we don't have it, they won't compromise with something else,” she says. “They see skateboarding and snowboarding videos. They see professionals wearing stuff so they want to wear it, too.”

The products aren't cheap: Sweatshirts range to about $80 and T-shirts to $25, with prices for the store's own private labels 25 per cent less. She's often surprised that parents are willing to shell out for big brands. “My parents probably wouldn't have paid for that,” says Rasko, 21.

Still, while the preteen boys' category may be more resilient to the downturn, it has not been recession-proof. West 49, the country's largest extreme-sport fashion chain, has dropped its prices by up to 20 per cent from two years ago, after parents balked at prices of such brands as Quiksilver and Billabong, says Sam Baio, chief executive officer at West 49.

The markdowns squeezed the retailer's bottom line, but they're starting to pay off in higher sales. In its latest quarter, West 49's same-store sales at outlets open a year or more (an important retail measure) rose almost 3 per cent from a year earlier.

Jonah's parents, both real-estate brokers, have their limit on how much they'll spend on the youngest of their two sons (not including three grown boys from his previous marriage). A $100 pair of Abercrombie & Fitch jeans now looks excessive when Gap is selling stylish denim at half that, Kathie Wood says.

“In a way it's bad and in a way it's good,” adds Herman Wood. “I'm glad that he looks after himself and he cares about what he wears. I'm not thrilled about the fact that all this hype with these lines are thrown on him and there's no value to them. Why a Free City sweatshirt is $200 or $250 – I don't have a clue.”

But price isn't the only issue. One of Jonah's biggest frustrations is not being able to find a small enough size in the brands he likes. The family drives once a year to the New York City area, where Mr. Wood's family lives, and finds a wider offering for Jonah at stores such as Bloomingdale's and Scoop. Shopping is focused on the two boys, Jonah and his 16-year-old brother Ryan.

In Canada, Jonah is drawn to Lacoste partly because it stocks his size. “They know him by name there because he loves it so much,” Kathie Wood says.

Tweens tend to be fashion followers rather than early adopters and often copy their older brothers, Baio observes. That is the case with Jonah, who watches his brother's fashion tastes closely. Says his mother, “I think it's a whole metrosexual thing or whatever you want to call it. Guys are really taking an interest in how they look and they really care about how they look. It's really transferring down to young kids.”