There’s a new pregnant Barbie in town – and she’s not wearing your grandma’s curtains. Margot Robbie, last seen on Wimbledondressed head to toe in Alaïa, always looks gorgeous thanks to her amazing stylist. Pregnant too. And yet, here I am to warn her, the musty ghost of pregnancies past, that the countdown to her well-dressed days has officially begun.
At the beginning of your motherhood, your clothing style changes
I didn’t think I’d fall victim to the new mother-style succubus either, but I don’t believe any of us are safe when it comes to the seductive appeal of stretchy clothing. Once upon a time, when I was young and self-satisfied, I thought that my life wouldn’t change when I became a mother. I would still be me. I would still wear the same clothes, do the same things, and live the same life. I would never look out of place, unwashed, or unchic. Never.
Ten years later, two children later, I can absolutely confirm that I was wrong. As I sit here typing, I can see about five mysterious spots on the front of my shirt and based on the general dampness I feel on my back, there’s probably an additional cluster lurking there as well.
Something happens when you have kids. A switch flips and you suddenly have about seventy-five trillion more things to think about than you used to. My daily internal monologue was pretty chillybefore children. If I had to assign a persona to it, it would be an American disc jockey from the fifties, languidly talking me through the daily agenda. Questions about dinner plans and what to do at the weekend sometimes floated in and out of my head like little cumulus clouds.
Exhausted and screaming
Now, almost three years after having children, my internal monologue is exhausted and SCREAMING. It’s Al Pacino at the end of Scarface. It’s insane, insane, and mostly caffeinated. It screams back and forth between my ears like a waitress yelling orders at a chef: “BOIL WATER FOR FORMULA IN FIVE MINUTES!”; “WASH THE TRICERATOPS DRESS FOR NATIONAL DINOSAUR DAY TOMORROW AT CHILDREN’S DAY!”; “YOU HAVE FIVE MINUTES TO POOP WHILE THEY’RE NAPING!”. It has no time to care for clothes or appearance. It’s holding out for my life while my sanity hurtles through the Earth’s atmosphere at 800 miles an hour.
The space in my little brain is too crowded now. I recently heard somewhere that you can only can have one thought at a timebut somehow I manage to hum ‘what’s that smell?’, ‘why is she screaming?’ and ‘please tell me he’s not eating a battery’ in unison at all times like the low-pitched tinnitus of someone suffering from tinnitus. There’s no room left to consider a three-piece outfit with relevant accessories and appropriate footwear. I need whatever is easy, quick and smells the least like mashed apple and baby farts.
Small children are the culprit for your expensive clothes
Most days it’s also generally unwise to carry anything of value – I currently have an 11-month-old and some of the food he eats, once mixed with saliva, creates a kind of industrial cement. Should this come into contact with silk, delicate cotton or any form of luxury clothing, it would mean the rapid death of that garment.
The activities my old clothes were geared towards no longer match the situations I currently find myself in. In my previous life, I didn’t live on edge, expecting to spontaneously grab a baby to prevent him from eating another baby. What I now need my clothes to do goes beyond what I could ever expect from a piece of clothing.
While I used to think of an elastic waist as a sign of a life gone by, I now consider my sweatpants a trusted friend. They help me keep my sanity. I’m often just a stubbed toe away from a public meltdown, so anything that helps me live my life with ease is very welcome.
Sloppy hobbit
That’s not to say I’ve given up my appearance completely, far from it. The only people who are allowed to see me dressed like a sloppy hobbit are close friends and family (husband, kids, Tesco staff, nursery staff).
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Where I used to try every day, I now only try very rarely. In my pre-children life, I wore make-up and dressed in absurd clothes morning, noon and night. I wore latex to the grocery store, sequins to the post office and silk dresses to the newsagent. It seems both insane and ridiculous to continue in this way, when most of my days are spent in what feels like a never ending food fight.
Old normal clothes
Where I used to have only one mode, I now find that I need three. If my day is mostly about kids or working from home, my appearance looks a lot like a crazy deep sea creature. On the rarest of occasions, when I can see a life without children for hours on end, I go back into my old wardrobe. I carefully remove the silk shirts and skirts with sequins from my wardrobe, like archive pieces in a museum, I carefully place them on my body and quickly run out of the house, making sure not to touch any surfaces.
Wearing my ‘old normal’ clothes now feels like being a kid after rummaging through a dressing up bin, half princess, half ostrich and 100% proud of their crazy lipstick job. It feels special to dress again the way I’m used to. It’s exciting, it’s fun, and it’s joyful. I don’t feel like I’ve lost the person who wore these clothes, but rather that I’m at a stage in life where practicality is king.
The mother-to-be wore a white Cady AW24 midi dress with an Alaïa polka dot pattern and an attached cape draped over one shoulder. She styled the look with a black and cream Le Teckel canvas bag, black calfskin heels and dark sunglasses.
No death sentence
While the clock is ticking on the carefree days of Margot Robbie in white dresses, it is not a death sentence in fashion. It is merely a waiting room in the wardrobe wilderness before life can return to normal for all of us in the trenches of early parenthood. There will come a time, not so far away, when our children will no longer be covered in hummus, or sand, or goo of ambiguous origin. Our little people will soon no longer try to eat shoes, flour our houses, or pee behind our couches.
When that day comes, we will be ready. We will rise like a flock of phoenixes from the ashes. We will re-emerge on the stage of life as anointed drag queens in feathers, glitter, and velvet. We will be sleek, unsullied, and wrapped in impractical fabrics. But for now, I will do my best to embrace this crazy, chaotic, and twisted time of life.
