What do I wear when I'm with my kids but still care about how I look
Alternatively: I'm a better mom in a good outfit
In honor of Mother’s Day, I’ll be making a donation to WPA — an organization that helps women reunite with their families and get back on their feet following incarceration. This month, they’re highlighting the story of Joyce McMillan, a former WPA participant and current board member, who fought relentlessly to regain custody of her daughter after she was taken away in 1999. You can read the story in her words here. For Mother’s Day, WPA has set a goal to raise $10,000 (Edie Parker will be matching every dollar donated up to $5,000) and reach 10,000 followers on Instagram this month. To donate, click here. To follow WPA, click here.
The below is a dispatch on how to dress.
To be practical and true to oneself are not virtues that necessarily run counter to each other, but when you’re a mom there’s a specific kind of practicality that is required to take care of your kids — especially when they’re toddlers. Let’s break it down by box-to-check:
Comfort: You’ll want to be able to sit, legs pretzel style, or kneel down to meet your kid at face level. You’ll also want to feel comfortable enough (keyword is enough) running in case they’re on scooters.
Durability: If you’re at the park, sitting on the outskirts of the sandbox while your twin daughters spoon-feed scoops of sand to each other’s heads, you might not realize it, but you’re probably going to have a stain behind you when you get up to break up the scoop fight.
Or maybe you’re not at the park but you are eating together, or digging through soil, you probably want to know you don’t have to think twice about knowing you can run whatever you’re wearing through a dishwasher.
I mean washing machine.
Convenience: This one is still a challenge — I don’t choose a shoulder bag before one with a top handle, but that makes it harder to hold my kids’ hands when we’re crossing the street or walking down steps or getting off the subway. I also don’t choose a big bag over a tiny one, which is always chosen for the purpose of enhancing the overall outfit (not to be confused with an outfit full of overalls though honestly, a good contender for thing-to-wear while with kids):
But you know what you never regret leaving home with when you have kids?
Tissues
Wet wipes
I.C.E. snack packs or water or like, hair ties. So a big bag it is! Here are four options at $267, $50, a market bag search on Etsy, and Mansur Gavriel’s Tulipano bag at $495-$695.
This really brings me to the crux of the prompt. Lots of women have reached out asking how to dress without feeling like they’ve completely lost themselves while taking care of their kids.
Here’s the formula I suggest: check off the boxes of comfort, durability and convenience then ask yourself what you’re wearing when you feel most like yourself. One good way to figure out the answer is to ask another question: What is the most surefire outfit you have in your closet — the one you put on when you’re in a rush, want to know you’ll look good (or at least like yourself!) and don’t have time to think about what you’re wearing?
I come back to a combination of denim over and over. It’s what I wear when there’s no room in my head to think, or if I’m in a rush, or if I’m just not in the mood, for whatever reason, to try something new. Do you have anything like that? Could you wear it while you’re parenting? If you don’t, or if not, I’ll explain why this one works.
The banner sentiment is ease.
Easy to move in. When I buy jeans, I think about whether or not I am going to want to tuck shirts (or sweaters) into them, and based on the answer to this question, I buy them either one or two sizes bigger than my regular size to avoid friction when I’m styling or when I am backing my own ass up.
Easy to style. Silhouettes like a button-down shirt and straight-leg pants are relative basics, and denim is a fabric that’s been crowned neutral to the extent that it matches with everything. Medium wash varietals are barely even considered a color at this point, you know? So anyway, if you’re big on accessorizing — if one way through the gates of self-expression by way of fashion is actually just adding the cherry on top of the ice cream sundae, the basic silhouettes and neutral fabric make it easy to go ham.
But don’t wear something that snags. Avoiding friction is a good priority to set.
These shoes accommodate both categories above because they’re easy to move in (you can run after your kid — wouldn’t recommend marathon training though — and travel pretty far distances. Yesterday, I walked 4 miles in them) and fulfill the style part in “easy to style.”
The last thing is:
Easy to clean. Go ahead, fuck them up. Nothing will happen after they’re laundered provided you’re not hiding large sums of undeclared money in the pockets. As a matter of fact, in fact, my least popular opinion is that denim gets better after you wash it. It gets softer (and therefore easier to move in), it fades over time (becoming even more neutral, one might argue), and really becomes, you know, you. Which is the whole point of this exercise.
Ok! That took longer than I thought it would but hope it was helpful.
Yours truly,
Leandra