Romancing the Tunic
This season, everything makes me look pregnant — except maternity wear.
by Kim Brooks
May 14, 2007
A few months ago, I spotted a friend in a coffee shop. I hadn't seen her in a while, and I noticed right away that she seemed changed. She appeared rosy-cheeked and bosomy, a bit fatigued, but very happy, and she was wearing a roomy, tunic-style blouse, darts just beneath her bust, and a full, pleated front that swayed loosely a good four inches in front of her navel. I ran up to her, smiled, and said, "Hey, you. Big news! How far along are you?" Her smile faded, then mine. I contemplated faking a cerebral hemorrhage, but instead, blushed deeply and announced in a matter-of-fact tone that I was the dumbest person in the world, all the while cursing the designer responsible for my mistake. The encounter, as far as I can tell, highlights two issues: one, my colossal social clumsiness, and two, a bizarre reversal between maternity and non-maternity styles that has recently made the task of determining who is or isn't pregnant surprisingly difficult.
I first noticed the trend while shopping with my mother-in-law. She walked out of the dressing room of a chain-retailer, the sort of place that is neither at the cutting edge nor tail-end of fashion, wearing a flutter-sleeve, trapeze top with a pleated twist neck — a highlight of the store's new spring line. I should interject here, for the sake of accuracy and familial harmony, that my mother-in-law is a stylish and exceedingly trim woman, in better physical shape than most of my thirty-something friends.
"What do you think?" she asked.
I hesitated. She looked about three months pregnant.
"It's not your color," I said, and we moved on to the jeans department.
This was not an isolated incident. Everywhere I looked, the stores were filling up with bubble dresses, blouses with pleated tops, empire waists and draped bodices. In just a couple seasons, styles had taken a 180-degree turn from the tight and hip-hugging to the loose and fluid. As best I could tell, a shift this big hadn't taken place since the second decade of the last century. It was then that the French designer Paul Poiret introduced the sheath and sack dress. Abandoning the tightly upholstered, hourglass shape of nineteenth-century gowns for a flowing,
How could I be the only one who noticed how the svelte looked maternal in these styles? lithe, softer silhouette, he fed the fad for Orientalism and had women of the upper-classes dressing up in the pantaloons of harem girls and geisha-inspired kimonos. This all took place, however, long before maternity clothes came along and co-opted billowing cuts for their effectiveness at hiding a pregnant belly.
I began to wonder if I was the only one aware of this fact, if the rest of the world was experiencing a bout of maternity-fashion amnesia. How could I be the only one who noticed how the svelte looked questionably maternal in these styles, the curvy and full-figured, positively preggers? When I became pregnant myself, not long after the incident with my mother-in-law, everyone's clothes looked so damn big, I half expected maternity stores to be featuring extra-large judicial robes and tent-sized ponchos. What I found came as a total surprise.
I'd survived a queasy first trimester of buttered saltine crackers, Wonder Bread and sugar cookies — worshiping daily at my newfound altar of carbohydrates — and now, plump and swollen, I was faced with the reality that — unlike the new floppy fashions my non-pregnant friends were buying — maternity styles seemed all about tight-fitting, belly-bearing pieces. There were sundresses that accentuated my bust; clinging, super-low-rise slacks bordering on the obscene; tube dresses so tight they might as well have been printed with big red arrows pointing toward my bulge. I wandered back to my old-stand-by stores, a bit bewildered, and purchased several tunics, some stretch leggings, a dress with an empire waist. I wore one of them the next day to work, and of course, it was this day that my co-workers looked me over and declared, "Wow, you really are pregnant." A friend went on to say, "I saw that shirt. I wanted to get it, but I thought it made me look, you know . . ."
©2007 Kim Brooks and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Kim Brooks has written for Glimmer Train, One Story, Epoch
and the Missouri Review. She also writes non-fiction for
The Crier. She lives in Chicago with her husband and son. |
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