What do moms really wear with Courtney Grow
What do moms really wear with Courtney Grow
One last dose of summer style from the mom of four, who talks female friendship and camaraderie, resisting the feminine urge to martyrdom and assuming your kids will remember everything
What do moms really wear is a series that captures to process of getting dressed for mothers with young kids. To revisit the last edition with Megan O’Neill, click here.
Up today: Courtney Grow, the fashion personality and unofficially but highly apt market editor who lives in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn with her four kids and husband.
The morning routine: what to wear to drop off/pick up
My day starts at 6 a.m., the arrangement I have with [my husband,] Wyatt is that he gets the kids ready for school — the creative part of my brain is most vibrant first thing so I try to pump out two hours of work between 6 and 8 a.m. And then we all walk to school together.
Those 2 hours alone are like magic time, and I’m open to whatever creative surge will spike. Sometimes I just get on the train — so much of my inspiration comes from riding the train. It’s hundreds of people expressing themselves in such honest, personal ways.
Those morning hours are also when I game plan what is worth sharing online. I separate whatever clothes I’m working with into categories of what is aspirational, what’s practical and what’s straightforwardly affordable and I try to make sure I have something from all these categories to present to my audience.
When people ask what I do, I tell them I work with clothes. It’s been the most endearing obsession of my life — like since I can remember. Since I started making my memories, clothes have been a centerpiece.
But back to the morning — we take our kids to school around 8 a.m., it’s just a 6-minute walk from home and they’re all in the same school. On the walk, we play the movie game (I give them clues about a movie and they have to guess which one I’m thinking about) which is often a good reset because there is so much emotional charge around leaving the house, you know? “Where are my shoes!” “I’m not done with breakfast,” so we reset back to a playful state.
My kids are 9, 7, and I have 4 year old twins.
Wyatt comes with us on the walk — he is fully the morning captain and has always been this person. He’s a big breakfast person so loves to make them their bacon, eggs, pancakes, etc.
Then I come home after drop off and get myself ready and try to feel like I have myself put together by 9:30 or 10 a.m.
School pick up is 2:45 for the younger ones and 3 p.m. for the olders. After school, it’s an immediate put-food-back-into-these-people situation.
I usually bring something fresh for them to eat like sliced fruit or a yogurt drink and then after that…it’s been really fun living in New York. We’re from Utah and moved less than a year ago and we weirdly spend more time outside here than we did there. They’ll grab ices on the way back and then we’ll come home, they’ll do their homework while my twins color and eventually they’ll all start playing together. Earlier this summer, they all did a lemonade stand together. It was so cute.
A Mormon upbringing between California and Utah
I grew up in California. My family is Mormon, and the only college my parents would pay for was in Utah so I moved when I was 18, met Wyatt at 20 and we got married at 22. He’s from Utah, and we lived there until moving to New York.
I was raised by very religious parents and practiced Mormonism myself for a while, but [the through line of the religion] stopped making sense for me about 15 years ago when I couldn’t get pregnant. My relationship to religion became a false belief that nothing bad could ever happen to me because I was observant. Eventually, I realized that I was practicing in the hope of protecting myself from pain (which we all feel no matter what) instead of genuine faith.
Ultimately, it took me years to get pregnant with my first — we started trying like a year after marriage and I remember feeling like a bubble was bursting in my life. I felt rejected, like something is wrong with me. In the end, we figured it out — it had more to do with Wyatt, which I mention proudly because I really appreciate how forthcoming he is about it. You know, so many men are so ashamed when the conception issue has to do more with them but he doesn’t have any shame around it. He doesn’t feel like he did anything to cause it and he didn’t!
When I finally got pregnant, I was so afraid. I’d literally eat lunch in the hospital parking lot and wait for the baby to kick. In a way, I lost all my faith during the process of trying to conceive. Mormonism, the way I understood it, was all about being obedient so that bad things don’t happen to you, but there’s no protection from real life, and there’s actually a sort of relief in that.
“I think the challenge of parenting is truly not losing your mind during that last hour with them”
Parenting is so wonderful and so intense and so engrossing and I’m actually grateful I had to work for it because it framed how much I wanted it. Especially with the twins — I cannot believe anyone just gets them from sex! [I did IVF.] It’s so wild. So lucky.
The evening routine
…So after they do their homework/have finished playing, we’ll eat dinner. It’s usually takeout (there are so many good options here!) or a simple and straightforward grilled chicken/noodles with butter. In the neighborhood, we order Greek food or from Baby Luc’s a lot. My kids love ramen too. Then if the weather is nice, we go for a stroll, come home, bathe, get swept in a little chaos, then bedtime.
There is always an abundance of energy that needs to be released before they go to bed — I think the challenge of parenting is truly not losing your mind during that last hour with them. My mother-in-law once said that when you’re on the cusp of losing your temper, if you just hang on for 30 more seconds and breathe through the anger, it helps it dissipate. With that consciousness, you make different choices in those 30 seconds and I’ve found the advice to be really helpful.
I’m really lucky, too, because I have a very hands-on husband. We’ve really parented side-by-side since the very beginning. He has a very flexible schedule and works from home (it’s always been this way) and absolutely loves being a father.
Out of the gates, he wanted to be very involved; and he really wanted to have to twins — more than I did. It was so important for him that all the kids grow up with a lot of siblings. There are 7 kids in his family, and 6 in mine, so I get it. Siblings are such a gift.
A solo night: what to wear when you’re going out kids-free
I’m not a super fancy dresser but if I’m good at one thing, it’s incorporating a lot of different texture to my outfits. I would rather look a little fancy during the day and then more casual at night. I’m actually more of a one outfit a day kind of person and rarely go for sexy, but do love a sheer moment. So here’s an example of something I’d wear morning to night on a day with no kids. Courtney alone, Courtney meeting with friends.
I love to talk when I’m with my friends, I just love real interactions with people, you know? It lights me up. None of my friends really care about clothes, so the conversations are always pretty unrelated.
I grew up with 4 sisters. Having a lot of sisters, I think, helped me view women not as threats but, in fact, as hopeful connections. Although I've found several women who are genuine connectors and cheerleaders, it hasn’t been my experience to encounter this as often in the fashion world. It seems more competitive than I would have wanted. I crave warmth, and I get that from my close friends who are doing lots of things outside of clothes and fashion. What’s underrated is that it really is like an elixir for the soul to be there for your girlfriends.
I’d also wear this on date night with Wyatt.
He and I met on a blind date — we’ve been married 15 years now. It was on from the beginning with us. There were no games: we weren’t mean to each other, we didn’t hurt each other. It was always easy. He’s a very whole human, has stable and incredible parents and I have to say that I credit a lot of this to the Mormon aspect. I wrestle with it as far as my kids go too — how important is it to bring religion and faith into their lives? How do we do it in an authentic way?
Coming to New York
I always wanted to live here and the timing was right: I’m through the stress of my pregnancies and having very small children and I’m feeling more like myself than I have in a decade. There’s something about having small children that makes it easy to lose yourself. And you’re in fact encouraged to do that. When you have an identity outside of your kids you’re often marked as selfish. It’s like when people describe their moms as being so selfless. I now find myself wondering what their mothers' inner worlds were like while raising children.
You rarely hear about dads described that way, meanwhile I grew up with a mom who worked and I knew she loved me and would do anything for me but I never once felt like me and my siblings were the only priority in her life. She had rich friendships, she traveled, she did things that modeled a healthy adult life, which is what I want to do for myself and my kids.
The transitions between work and home while we lived in Utah were difficult. It was hard to leave my kids, it was hard to come back to them. But now being in New York has created this balance that I’ve never experienced before. Everything about life with kids somehow feels more fluid, integrated.
One huge difference though is the social component. I’m nervous about the middle/high school element of [my kids life here]. My kids won’t have social media or phones until they’re awkwardly old. Which wouldn’t be a problem in Utah but I wonder how hard the line will be to tow in the city.
Sourcing vintage
I don’t have full time help but 3 days a week someone comes from 4-8 p.mm and those are days that Wyatt and I will go for a walk or to get a quick dinner and then we’ll make sure to be back by bedtime. It’s really important for me to be there when they go to bed. It’s usually when I go to bed too! Or I start sourcing vintage.
I find a lot of it on Etsy — it’s an easy forum to use. TRR doesn’t work for me, the search is bad and I don’t think you get enough of the magic of what’s outside of their standard of brand. I want to see the $40 bag that someone bought in Morocco with no label.
My Etsy process usually starts with me seeing something expensive somewhere. Figure a Paco Rabanne bag. Then I’ll search metal bags on Etsy. And will find a cute cigarette holder and turn it into bag.
I like to start later on the pages because less people are going that deep into the archive.
When I’m looking for affordable comps for expensive things is usually the most complicated. I always want to be respectful to designers and their IP but I also feel like so few ideas are super original anymore. I view a lot of things as a gateway drug to making investments — like if you find a pair of mesh flats for $40 and start wearing them with everything, you know for next time you can save up and invest in the expensive thing.
I just spend so much time looking at things online that I can very quickly sniff out what’s good. I think I’m a good editor. I probably spend like 2 hours a day looking at things online. I look at the obscure like Source Unknown and Lisa Says Gah, but also the obvious ones like Shopbop or Zara. I know what’s worth sharing, usually, by following the gut reaction I get when I encounter something. When it’s real, I could not be talked out of the thing.
A shortlist of Fall wishes:
Still Here’s red cotton t-shirt
Kallmeyer’s distressed single breast leather jacket
the ‘Teacup’ bralette from Coucou Intimates
Zara’s navy and red plaid flannel shirt
Soeur’s ‘Bidart’ jumper
Juju Vera’s ‘Athena’ choker
Justine Menard’s ‘Les Ondines’ necklace and ‘Nereids’ earrings
Alfie Paris’ black and white plaid shirt
What to wear on the weekend
I found this t-shirt and the jeans at [the vintage show,] Current Affair. I find a lot at Vintage Twin too.
The one thing I’ll say re: vintage t-shirts is that if you’re looking for one, there’s a specific search term you want to use.