Let's talk about...what you're wearing

Strike a pose

I have terrible dress sense. Just absolutely terrible. I’m not really interested in fashion or shopping. I would like to be, but honestly I just find it so boring and I’m bad at it. I do not know how to put an outfit together.

However, now I’m past the stage where I’m covered in jam, snot and yogurt on the reg (courtesy of a small child, not my own ineptitude - mostly) I do have some interest in looking a bit more stylish, and so of course I turned to Instagram and discovered the ‘mum aesthetic’ which got me thinking about clothing as a form of identity.

Guess who’s back, back again?

Yes, like the niggling tones of Eminem, as Slim Shady rises from the ashes for a new generation, if we’re talking about fashion then we have to go back in time to the nineties. Because nothing makes you feel older then realising you’ve lived through a full fashion cycle.

You remember the nineties right? A world of Kappa tracksuit, Adidas poppers and Kickers shoes. We all wore our hair scrapped back into a teenage facelift, two symmetrical strands left free at the front to frame our face that even with the lightest of touches remained distinctly orange. Thankfully the 21st century update has left some of this behind but it is still recognisably nineties in style, and so I find my matrescence era channeling my adolescence era as I once more reach for the comfy sports and jeans aesthetic that haunted my youth and upcycle it for my 40s.

My mum style has been fairly non-existent for the past six years. For a long time it was whatever I could fit into, then it was pandemic comfort, back to being whatever I could fit into again. This was followed by a long period of ‘I don’t care if that gets dirty’, until finally I emerged into a ‘let’s try not to be the slobbiest mum in the playground but I work from home and still want to wear trainers’ vibe. And so my quest for what to wear began, but it always had to be prefaced with ‘as a mum’, and quite soon after that I had to add in ‘who is 40’.

But what is mum fashion?

Well, I hate to tell you, but we’re basically all channeling Regina George’s mum.

Because the whole point of having ‘mum fashion’ is to not look like a ‘mum’. But in complete contradiction to this, it is also to embrace the identity of motherhood and its day to day practicalities. Such as the school pick ups, the soft play gauntlets and being able to carry a melting-down toddler (because he didn’t want the snack he asked for, threw it in a puddle and now wants to eat it, but you’ve said no in case he contracts cholera) and his scooter out of the playground with ease. This is never going to be covered in Vogue, but it is incredibly accessible with Instagram. Every other reel is someone telling me how they can elevate my look. They’re not wrong, they absolutely can.

There was an amazing research paper I found from August 2021 called Instagram Style Mums and the Fashionable Ideal

We have examined what constitutes “mum style” and argued that its creation by non- fashion professionals, its accessibility and its more inclusive body positive aesthetic implicitly, and often explicitly, challenges the power of the dominant fashionable ideal. By sharing their “mum style” with their followers these mums construct a “mum uniform” adapted to the demands of motherhood and display their maternal body which is made visible through style. In doing so, these mums celebrate a different fashionable body to the conventional aesthetic that one has to be young, thin, and white to be fashionable. The mums we have analyzed are generally larger, older and racially diverse. This “mum style,” broadly speaking, is highstreet not high fashion, and is suited to the demands of the school run and domestic life wherein it is often displayed.

This little corner of the internet is reclaiming their identity. It’s saying you can be a mum WITHOUT being invisible. You can be comfortable AND stylish, and you can do it at high street prices. It also feels so much more relatable than a model in a magazine or on a catwalk. You feel like if you followed their advice you could actually pull off an outfit that looks completely un-styled but actually has some thought behind it. Thought that I would genuinely never have.

How you dress is a way to express your identity and I think for mums in particular, you often spend a long time being unhappy with the changes to your body. To have other women recognise the reality of that, embrace their own maternal body and help improve your confidence by showing you how to dress is actually a teeny part of social media that is doing good, as opposed to the bin fire that is most of the internet.

The millennial mum uniform is such a handy way of saying I don’t have the mental capacity or time to think about what to wear, my main shops are Tesco and/or anything online, I gave one of my kids the wrong coloured cup this morning (and paid the price), but I am trying to be comfortable in my body and build a version of myself that I like the look of, one French tuck at a time.

Things I love

Big Mood. I watched it on a whim because the reviews had been good but it didn’t particularly appeal to me. Was hooked instantly. Hilarious, touching, characters you care about - tick, tick, tick. What a gem.

What I’m eating?

Talking of the nineties, who knew they still made these bad boys! Anyone remember the advert? You know, back in the days when no one thought it was despicable to advertise chocolate to kids. They were on offer in Tesco and guess who’s got two thumbs, a belly full of chocolate biscuit and has hidden the rest of the packet so no one else can eat them!

And of course, because it brings me joy, a little meme of the week….