Looking good when you are pregnant has never seemed more important.
Paula Cocozza shares ten tips for surviving pregnancy in style.
Discovering that you are pregnant can induce a range of responses from exhilaration to desolation, and the life-disturbing enormity of it can just about explain and excuse any of them. Which is a good thing, because within a few hours of learning my own news, I was making myself comfortable with paper and pencil, sketching out the beginnings of a maternity wardrobe. I drew well-cut shorts with empire-line tops, man-size shirts tied under the bump, trapeze dresses (the ones that seem enormous if you hold the hem out wide, but which, left alone, fall into a graceful triangle), trousers with gents' cumberbunds, and dungarees. I am not obsessed with fashion - though I am interested in it - so why is it, I wondered when I came to, that it has become so important to look good when pregnant, and why do pregnant women feel under so much scrutiny?
Ever since 1991, when we saw "More Demi Moore" on the cover of Vanity Fair, the focus on women during pregnancy - first famous ones, and latterly the rest of us - has sharpened. Many have followed in Moore's footsteps, from Gwyneth Paltrow flashing the elasticated waist of her jeans on the cover of W (June 1994) to Britney Spears in Harper's Bazaar last year and Myleene Klass in this month's Glamour. We have seen and scrutinised the marvellous enlargement over nine months of Kate Moss, Victoria Beckham, Madonna, Sarah Jessica Parker and Sofia Coppola, all of them as famous for their clothes as for their particular talents, and have watched with equal interest their ballooning then speedy shrinking. If pregnancy once led inexorably to confinement, now it is the launchpad for a new kind of exposure.
Miranda Almond is a fashion editor at Vogue, 36 weeks into her second pregnancy, and has been sticking diligently during the past eight months to some low-waisted skinny jeans bought on the non-maternity floor at Gap. "Years ago, you were pregnant and people just left you to get on with it," she says. "There's definitely more focus on it now - partly because there's more focus in general on celebrities. And when these women get pregnant a huge amount of attention is paid to them." Pregnancy acts as a magnifying glass to the pervasive media interest in body image, as if the exaggerated shape of the expectant stomach somehow enlarges our interest - and offers a guaranteed narrative of yo-yoing weight.
The maternity-wear market has blossomed correspondingly. Even while the birth rate was falling, between 1998 and 2003, the maternity-wear market was experiencing a 10% growth. If women were having fewer children, their expenditure per pregnancy was rising as the disposable income of mothers-to-be increased along with their age (Basma Alireza, co-founder of upmarket boutique Blossom, puts its customer profile at age 25 to 40). The high street was quick to spot a new niche. In 2004, Topshop launched its maternity collection. New Look and Marks & Spencer followed. And Gap has finally launched a capsule collection in the UK after years of success in the US.
For years, maternity wear was a fashion backwater - a world in which pinafores prevailed year after year (no such thing as seasons here) and which serviced its hapless customers through nursery shops rather than fashion ones. Now, it is increasingly looking to the catwalk. This summer, the designer Emma Cook produced a collection for Topshop that included softly printed dresses that seemed to view the necessary volume as an integral part of their shape rather than as an inconvenience. Clements Ribeiro has designed a line for Blossom, and even Mamas & Papas - better known for its pushchairs - has found a fashion vocabulary. It has just held a catwalk show for its autumn/winter collection, starring Emma Bunton, and its current collection is referencing Marc Jacobs.
A maternity beauty and accessories industry has sprung up too. These days it is possible to buy a leopard-print nursing bra from Agent Provocateur and an enormous, waist-cinching brief for afterwards. On entering the fitting room at Blossom, in Kensington, London, encumbered shoppers are offered a cup of something called an Earth Mama Angel Baby Peaceful Mama tea (which tastes surprisingly good). On the counter are tins of Preggie Pop Drops - sweets to ward off morning sickness. From beauty line Mama Mio - which in the 18 months since its launch has oiled the expectant bellies of Beckham, Stella McCartney and Christy Turlington - you can buy preparations to see you through each trimester, starting with the Tummy Rub Stretch Mark Oil ("Say NO to stretch marks!") and culminating in the It's Time! kit, which will enable you to light an appropriately scented candle in the labour room and ready your birthing partner with the facial spritzer.
So why, despite all the choice, was my first proper maternity shopping trip such a depressing affair? Now that Emma Cook has sold out at Topshop, the offering looks unimaginative - simply fuller versions of smocky tops from the shop floor (though the jeans are good). Gap is brilliant for tops, but why do so many retailers imagine that once you become pregnant you want to exchange your normal sense of style for a boho tunic and a pair of bootleg jeans? Why do so many maternitywear providers offer this cut of jean above all others, while the rest of fashion continues to spurn it?
As if the sight of a prosthetic, strap-on bump - a staple of the specialist boutique - weren't bad enough, maternity clothes are often, frankly, insulting. A trawl of high street and online boutiques suggests that the ubiquitous and offensive tankini appears to have become the designated swimwear for the pregnant, even though a sympathetically cut bikini fits perfectly well and looks loads better. The wrap dress, which offered salvation to the stylish pregnant a few seasons ago, now seems testimony only to lack of imagination: like the bootleg jeans, this is not a shape that has any relevance now, yet is wheeled out by every high-street maternity store because someone has decided it's flattering.
"I just thought, I don't like these clothes," says Suzanne Clements, of her shopping trips during her recent pregnancy and whose line for Blossom (which skirts the problem by handpicking non-maternity pieces that will accommodate a pregnant shape) will be in store from the end of August. "I went to Topshop and I was really disappointed. I thought they'd flung a few styles in from downstairs, lengthened it and called it maternity wear. Why would I wear those clothes just because I'm pregnant? It's disgusting. Formes maternity wear? Horrible."
All of which means that while the maternity-wear industry is burgeoning, fashion-conscious women are going for a different approach: spurning dedicated maternity wear in favour of resourceful shopping, because it is the only way to keep looking like you. Clements says that she wears "the same clothes pregnant or non-pregnant". Cook liked her maternity dresses so much she is still wearing them post- pregnancy, belted. Almond, in the front line at Vogue, has made only one maternity-specific purchase during her two pregnancies, surviving on tops from Cos. As for my own hopeful sketches of a maternity wardrobe, the search for that well-cut pair of shorts and dungarees ended only in Rome. Favourite, roomy dresses have come from APC and Phillip Lim - great non-maternity brands that are often cut loose.
Maybe none of this matters. But getting the clothes right seems to suggest you are getting other things right, too. Looking together at work is easier if you still look like the person you were before. And when almost every part of your body is shifting shape beyond your control, holding on to your personal style seems testimony to the fact that you are holding on to yourself.
guardian.co.uk
