In Santa Monica, even baby shops on fashionable Montana Avenue now sell Carhartt watch caps.
Look at any guidebook and one of the most "exciting, vibrant and cosmopolitan" areas of inner-Copenhagen is Norrebro, where nearly 30% of inhabitants are from immigrant communities and the organic cafes, bars and chic baby shops rub up against cheap kebab takeaways, pound shops and slightly seedy clubs.
A high-end baby shop has emerged, as has a store catering to the apparently well-off parents of pets.
In one big toy and baby shop there is not so much as a laden buggy, not even a glimpse of a pregnant stomach containing an embryonic emperor.
It's closer to the French baby shop Bonpoint, with its traditional knitting or cord in muted tones, than the bright colours of the Anglo-American high street.
At a meeting of new mothers last week at boing!, a baby shop in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, a dozen women with newborns gathered to confer about nipple shields, nap patterns and swaddling techniques.
(Work if you must, the authors say, but at least consider a job that will let you wear your child in a sling, like clerking in a baby shop).
"There are some gangs here and there is drug dealing, but I don't feel this is a dangerous place at all," says Hanne Kold, who runs a baby shop in the square.
Whether woven into clothing, linens, duvets or children's nappies, organic cotton is turning up everywhere, from pricey bed-and-breakfasts in Nantucket to the Green Baby shop in London's posh Notting Hill.Proponents claim the fibre is better for the planet, for growers and for consumers than the more common sort of cotton.
We could watch Mick at his prostate examination, or flinch and wince as Keef drops his suppositories and throws his back out, all to the angry grandpa accompaniment of "Hey Hey, You You, Get Offa My Lawn!" and "Have You Seen Your Grannny, Baby, Shopping At The Co-op?" Bring on those Steel Wheelchairs!
Meanwhile, recommendation engines like WeeSpring are working hard to offer solid feedback on very niche verticals, like pre-delivery baby shopping.
