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Addressed is a column about the act of getting dressed. Anything and everything is fair game for discussion, from animal prints and runway styling hacks to how to build the perfect winter shoe wardrobe.
We need to be adaptable like an elastic waist!
I launched a baby out of myself 11 months ago, I know what it’s like to be postpartum and have nothing to wear. At the beginning, I had two delusional thoughts about how I would dress as a new mom: One: I could wear what I thought of generously as a tent-like contraption to shroud my now-alien body. Or two: I could ignore my postpartum silhouette and wriggle into every sassy thing I wore pre-pregnancy. Neither option worked.
Two weeks after giving birth, having tried to fit into a pair of my husband’s Levi’s that felt like a spleen-crunching girdle, soft pants with an elastic waist became my savior. Yes, I understand that the mere mention of an elastic waist unleashes existential dread for many women. It’s as if a pair of pants with even a little bit of give is a death knell to one’s former self and style. Unfortunately, we think of the elastic waist as an extension of our after-birth identities: stretched-out and stretched-thin! But that’s the wrong way to think about it. Like an elastic waist, we must be malleable!
After all, everything can be elevated, yes even an elastic waist. I adore Los Angeles-based designer Brooke Callahan, who churns out really luxe, cool-girl pants with drawstrings in searingly beautiful colors. If you prefer a skirt, CouCou Intimates has a washable slip in a lush pointelle cotton.
My friend Amrit Tietz, who co-founded Spread the Jelly, which is like a cool mom WhatsApp group in the flesh, sent me several links, including a deliciously soft pair of silk pants from CommiSi, a polished leather iteration from La Ligne, and a tried-and-true pair of Leset’s famous Ariel pocket trousers. These are elegant pieces; pieces made to live in and morph to you.
When we were talking pants, Tietz, who is the mother of an almost three-year-old, said something that stuck with me. “I think people have this hesitancy in investing in a postpartum wardrobe. They see the transition as transient, but it’s actually not. It’s so much longer than we expect it to be.”
This is true. I am still postpartum! My hair only started growing back a few months ago! Sometimes, I still feel like I’m high on an epidural. I called up my former colleague, Alessandra Codinha, who weighed in too. Codinha, the mother of a fresh four-month-old, has been nailing postpartum dressing in Los Angeles. “I think it’s smart to buy a couple of things that make you happy to wear and ideally can be tucked in or altered in a way that will work when you feel more like yourself in the months to come,” she advises. Here is the key, based on what I gleaned from our conversation: choose a thoughtful piece with innate polish. I love a shirt with a collar, like a starchy oversized men’s button-down, while Codinha suggests a quarter-zip. “I felt very lucky to be postpartum at a moment when, thanks to Chanel, a quarter-zip sweatshirt looks chic and intentional and not like you’re waiting at Sweetgreen in Silicon Valley,” she quips. She prefers one from the brand Varley, while I myself am currently writing this in a crisp white H-O-R-S-E quarter zip.
Something else to think about: no stiff jackets. I had to leave an immovable Sonia Rykiel zip jacket behind and opt for a vintage belted wool one. Think about it: you need agency over your waist and your changing body. Muscle and fat shifts, bones expand. Desperately wanting to wear my old pair of Wrangler Wrancher jeans, black Kevlar-strong denim, that I could dress up and dress down, I bought two pairs a few sizes up. Tietz approved of this method, noting that she has“like, four, of the same pants.”
Nota bene: Don’t get bamboozled by the après-baby snap-back economy! It’s not instant. In fact, it may never actually happen. I myself like to think of postpartum as a new stage in life, and not in quantifiable terms like size or weight. I may never get back to how I was, and that is fine. I recently looked back at my pre-pregnancy wardrobe, and realized that psychologically, I am in a different headspace: the pieces I once wore, whether they fit or not, were for a different person. I grew out of them, mentally and style-wise. The biggest lesson: give yourself grace. Getting into a postpartum style groove doesn’t happen just like that. After all, time is a rubber band. Actually, you can think of it like an elastic waist.