Mother of All Fashion Tech Ecits

Brittny Brewer had a strong sense of style before becoming pregnant for the first time in 2017. But throughout her first two pregnancies, Brewer says she ended up "losing" herself fashion-wise. Instead of wearing streetwear-minded, trendy outfits, she found herself living in stretchy leggings and maternity dress that had little in common with her pre-pregnancy aesthetic: "It took away who I was as a woman before."

Now, seven months pregnant with her tertiary child, Brewer is taking a unlike arroyo to how she dresses. Instead of spending money on clothes for mothers-to-be, she's "going a size up" at regular fashion brands and retaining her personal style. "In that location's a lot of ways you can even so be comfy and even so be able to wearing apparel and feel sexy similar you want to be," she says.

Brewer is just one of the many expecting and new mothers rethinking their relationship with style throughout their pregnancy, opting for ingather tops, depression-ascension pants, and mesh bodysuits that highlight, rather than hide, their bumps. See: Rihanna, whose style throughout her pregnancy has remained true to her assuming aesthetic.

"When women become meaning, society tends to make information technology feel similar you hide, hibernate your sexy, and that you're not sexy right now [but] you'll get back there and I don't believe in that sh*t," she told Refinery29'south Venesa Coger. "So I'grand trying stuff that I might not accept fifty-fifty had the confidence to try before I was meaning. The strappiest, the thinnest, and the more cut-outs the meliorate for me." Over the past few weeks, the globe has witnessed exactly that with looks ranging from a see-through black baby doll wearing apparel with matching lingerie to a blue cutting-out catsuit and a diamond bra-and-leather micro mini skirt combo. "It's very inspiring and it'due south empowering [to see Rihanna'due south looks]," says Brewer. "But why aren't all women doing this?"

Maybe because lodge as a whole isn't past dated notions of what's acceptable to vesture when dressing with a bump. Valerie Rodriguez, who was pregnant in 2020, experienced this firsthand. She recounts a moment when a stranger approached her while on vacation in Las Vegas to signal out her outfit was not appropriate for an expecting adult female: "I was at a sneakers store, and I was wearing a clothes that was super sexy, when some girl looked at me and said, 'Oh, yous're pregnant and you're wearing that?"

This type of response also came from her family members, who were stunned by her maternity photoshoot, in which Rodriguez wore a encounter-through dress with rhinestones. "Their comments were very straightforward and similar, 'You lot're naked, delight don't postal service something like this,'" she says. "And I'1000 similar, 'And then what? I love my trunk, and I experience really good almost what I'm wearing.'" Jessica Gonzalez, who was also significant in 2020, experienced like reactions from her family unit, particularly from her grandmother. "She'd be similar, 'Why practice you take to have your boobs out?' Because they're new and they're awesome," says Gonzalez, calculation that her family members tried to gift her "mom-appropriate" article of clothing in an try to encourage her to cover up.

While maternity clothing is oft presented as a comfortable solution for pregnant women, with adjustable waistlines and lactation features meant to serve a changing trunk, many expecting women see its baggy, shapeless designs as club'south manner of suggesting that they need to change their looks for a more conservative way one time they start this journey. "I call up people were and so cruel to Kim [Kardashian], and she was really only dressing in bodycon dresses with heels the way that she would normally dress," Brooks Miller, who is currently expecting her first child, says of Kardashian'due south style in 2013.

Yet, maternity clothing is a modernistic invention. Throughout history, women wore their everyday article of clothing while meaning, loosening their corsets to suit for the bump and wearing shawls around their bodies to embrace the loosened ties on their dresses. It wasn't until the Victorian era that women began wearing motherhood corsets fabricated to reduce the appearance of a abdomen. This development continued throughout the 20th and 21st century as pregnant women adopted more than maternal-looking, conservative dresses that hid their bodies and whole maternity brands were introduced encouraging shoppers to embrace a new style.

Miller says that she is almost excited to sport bikinis during her upcoming babymoon vacation. Rodriguez felt a like security in her own skin while pregnant: "I felt sexy and powerful because this is such a cute feel." Meanwhile, Brewer is continuing to larn how to keep her mode personality intact throughout her pregnancy: "Nosotros're still the aforementioned person, we just happen to be a mom at present."

While information technology may seem that a celebrity'southward pregnancy style choices wouldn't affect everyday women, Brewer says that, in 2017, when Beyoncé revealed she was meaning with twins with a crash-land-bearing photoshoot on Instagram, she started to feel more confident with her changing body: "We all take that same capability of stepping into our inner Sasha Fierce and just really embracing our crash-land, really embracing who we are, regardless of what society is telling us what we should change."

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