High street buys into Manhattan's teenage preppies

Think tartan skirts. Think pearls. Think piped blazers and the ker-ching of cash registers across the UK as the latest US fashion phenomenon sweeps down through our TV and broadband cables and rolls out on to our high streets.
Gossip Girl, the most talked about American teenage television drama and, perhaps, the most cynical product placement exercise in history, is set to transform British teenage girls into preppy Manhattan Upper East-Siders.
After the summer release of the film Sex and the City, a follow-on from the hugely successful US television show which placed shoes by Jimmy Choo and Manolo Blahnik right at the top of the fashion-conscious female's wish-list, Gossip Girl is even more unashamedly commercial. She is the daughter of Sex and the City's Carrie Bradshaw. And, despite her highly conservative look, she is definitely more aggressive.