Motherhood is finally in fashion
Pregnant women on the runway, kids running in the show, glam babybots clinging to models - mums are having a moment.
The buzziest show of the latest fashion season was Chemena Kamali’s debut for Chloé at Paris Fashion Week. Yes, the clonky wedge sandals and high-waisted denim and floaty lacy chiffony things signalled a return to boho chic. It’s back and no jangly coin belt is safe.
It was a reminder too that the feminine and free Chloé Girl, established by the house’s founder Gaby Aghion in the ’50s as an easy breezy alternative to uptight French couture, has always been the original It Girl. Sienna Miller sitting on the front row, the ultimate boho It Girl in the mid-aughts, and a new mother for the second time, is proof of this.
Kamali, in her early 40s and a mother of two, is a Chloe Girl too.
It Girl essence is less a look than a mood. At the same time, fashion has been reframing motherhood and what it looks and feels like. When one of Kamali’s children jumped up to give her a hug as she took her bow at the end of the show, pictured above, it wasn’t just an adorable bring your child to work moment, but an act of making motherhood visible. This season there were pregnant models at cool New York brand Collina Strada, at French designer Marine Serre, a model carried a baby in a sling and at the Schiaparelli haute couture show house muse carried an unnervingly lifelike ‘robot’ baby.
Meanwhile, at Balenciaga’s provocative spring/summer ‘23 show male models also carried baby slings with fake babies in them.
Recently, Irish designer Simone Rocha – who designed her spring/summer ’22 collection as a new mother – explored the postpartum witching hours with designs that resemble nursing bras. Albeit ones made beautiful with embellishments. She described her lacy concoctions as “a funny, deranged negligee night-time sort of spooky, deranged insomnia theme....” It’s certainly a feeling most mothers in those hazy early days can relate to.
Nobody has done more for reimagining what maternity style can be than pop star Rihanna, who during her two pregnancies wore crop tops and black lace negligees. Rihanna’s influence on maternity style has marked a shift towards celebrating baby bumps rather than trying to minimise or disguise them.
Not that runway gimmicks signal real change (better childcare options and more women in senior positions would be preferred) or that we all need to dress like Rihanna when pregnant, or try to be an It Girl for the school run. But it’s heartening to see motherhood – in all its vulnerabilities and joys – celebrated in fashion.
Motherhood can be lonely and relentless, you might feel sometimes you’ve lost yourself – or feel you’ve lost your sense of style.
I’d argue that just how a mother’s brain rewires after having a baby (to be even more impressive!) so too can we evolve our idea of how a mother dresses.
