Everything I’ve learned about ‘mum style' since I had a baby
Plus what’s on my ‘mum style’ autumn wishlist
On holiday in Marseille last month, I momentarily forgot I was a mother. What I mean by that is I went out one day wearing loose-fitting white trousers and a white t-shirt. My husband, two-year-old and I went for a long walk, took a boat ride, and visited an old fortress - all perfectly fine activities for my pristine, monochrome outfit. But then we stopped for lunch. At a bistro in the Old Port, it soon dawned on me: ‘What the fuck was I thinking?’
As my toddler negotiated a huge bowl of tomato spaghetti with an adult’s fork, I shrieked as flecks of red landed on my outfit, before asking my husband to swap seats with me. The popular saying might be ‘never wear white after Labour day’ but a mother’s mantra should simply be ‘never wear white’. Post-pasta, little hands covered in red sauce slowly and menacingly came towards me for a hug, like a boyfriend protesting his innocence in a Wes Craven film.
Wearing all-white when you’re the mother of small children is an obvious error. Rookie. Amateur. But it’s also something you need to test out once in a while, to see if you’ve graduated to the next level of ‘mum style’, where you might be able to reintroduce, I dunno, a short skirt or even a chunky heel. I, clearly, was premature in my bid to try to jump to the next level. We’re just not there yet.
I tell this story because when I recently hosted an Ask Me Anything in my Chat, one of my readers asked if my personal style had changed since becoming a mother. She herself was struggling with her sartorial identity, post having a baby. And so it got me thinking about ‘mum style’ in general. While there are some obvious guidelines - avoid white, pockets are always handy, flats rule - does your style really have to change? Is there even such a thing as ‘mum style’? Well, this is everything I’ve discovered about dressing as a mother.