My Fashion-Sense Left me at Pregnancy and Never Returned.

There was a very brief period in my life when I embraced a bit of style. Although no one would ever call me a trendsetter, more like a trendlagger, I did try. I wandered into a boutique specializing in selling overpriced merchandise designed for young stylish women but was sold to suburban grandmothers. I tried but not quite sure I succeeded. The clothing was hawked by saleswomen that should have hung up their belly-shirts at least two decades prior.  

It was a moment in time when the stars aligned. Newly married with two incomes, the only big expenses were a mortgage and a weird Greyhound. Things changed in a nanosecond with pregnancy. 

Not Quite a Muumuu

Long before stretchy yoga pants and inexpensive, sort-of designer maternity clothes arrived in Target, there were only three options. I can’t remember the store names as I break out in a sweat even now when thinking about shopping for maternity clothes. I blocked out the memory of shoving that foam fake-belly under the clothes in the dressing room. The only difference between the three stores was the price points. I shopped at the cheapest one. I never could figure out why anyone would spend more money than needed on the ugliest impractical wardrobe with an expiration date. One exception was the expandable waist jeans. They were brilliant.  

.After two pregnancies, I couldn’t get rid of the clothes fast enough. I passed them down to the next unsuspecting almost-mother.

Life at a Strip Mall

18 months later, I had two little kids. Fashion-wise my kids and I started even. Target was less than a mile from my house, and it was a one-stop get everything kind of place. For the first five years of my kid’s lives, the wonder store was my entire social life as well as needs provider. Everything I craved in my postpartum pre-menopause hormonal nightmare years was satisfied behind the walls of those big red balls.

Although no one is calling Target a spiritual zen kind of place, I beg to differ. I could aimlessly roam the aisles and clear my head doing what now would be called free mindfulness therapy. I could get steps before the Apple Health app was a twinkle in Steve Jobs’ eye. I could yack it up with someone as everyone I knew was doing the same thing in those years. I could buy myself a present and get dog food at the same time. I could even sneak in a Slim Jim. It was Nirvana.

In the toddler years, both kids, my husband, and I were pretty much all dressed in Target apparel. A relative would provide a more upscale clothing gift now and then, but any extra energy I had was not spent shopping for clothes.

Revelation on a Bus Ride

Fast forward five years, and I was sitting on a school bus heading, who can remember where, to a kindergarten field trip when a very put-together woman sat next to me. She was wearing real pants, an actual blouse, and mother of God, she had on a belt. The final shock to my system was when she told me she had kindergarten twins and a brand new baby at home. I was wearing a spit-up stained T-shirt, and even my kids were now starting to move up the fashion ladder.

 Whatever the crappy trendy kid-friendly store of the moment was, my daughter found it. I assume it was through the pre-school playground gossip chain as the kids were not deviced-up yet. Very few girl moms in the early 2000s were spared the trauma of the glittery, unicorn, confetti-vomited outfits of our daughters’ youth. My son was no better. He spent his first 12 years dressed as a 70’s track star in neon green sweatsuits. 

How Much Did you Say?

As the years went on and I was still trying to figure out my style or lack thereof, my daughter was in a whole new stratosphere. Into our world came a name that sounded like a cartoon piece of fruit: Lululemon.

The first time I went into the store was when she bought a headband. They reeled her in with a small innocuous purchase. I casually walked over to the leggings and saw a $128 price tag. My first instinct was to look for the wayward jacket or top that fell off the hanger because no way could those simple leggings cost that much. Ha ha ha ha.

Some kids save for a car or college. My kid saved every dollar she ever received and parlayed it into a large gift card to buy a pair of the coveted leggings. The irony of my Walmart workout attire plus my handwashing of her wardrobe while I throw all my clothes, color sorting be damned, into the washer and dryer is not lost on me. The plus side of this is that she changed her college major to a field with lucrative paying jobs cause she knew she had to support this habit.

Almost Full Circle

With my daughter spending the GDP of a small country and my son now paying a fortune for shoes and bathing suits (I think it’s weird too), I had to up my game. I realize my normal existence is embarrassing enough for them, so I could step it up and look a bit better than a frazzled fry cook. 

Vogue will never come looking for me, but I have managed to settle into a passable suburban mom look. What really happened was fashion caught up to me and what I called my roll-out-of-bed look became Athleisure wear. I hit up a few stores where others of my ilk shop to get acceptable evening out attire, and my wardrobe became almost passable.

My style received a big boost a few years ago when I discovered hand-me-downs. For reasons only my snack drawer knows, I never thought I could wear my daughter’s clothes. Not only is she thinner and taller than me, her style is tight fitting, and mine is “does that come in extra large? ” Luckily, I found a few exceptions. Every so often, she would pass me an old pair of Vans and a few stretched-out leggings.

Before going off to college, she did a major cleanout. In a pile were some of her original LuLuLemons. For a good month, I just stared at them and refused to wear them. One day, I was living on the edge and squeezed into them. Oh my, they were so soft and so comfortable. I’m not going to the mall yet, but maybe if there is a sale……