I am currently “in it,” as my mom-friends like to say. With a daughter in kindergarten and an 18-month-old baby boy, that means I’m in the tantrum phase, the sleepless nights, the missed naps, the early wake-ups, the weaning, the whining, the diapers—and everything that comes with diapers.
Of course, being in it means I’m also firmly out of it, professionally, socially, sartorially. I used to be an editor at Vogue, Glamour and before that T: The New York Times Style Magazine. As someone who worked on beauty and culture desks, I spent my days interviewing and writing profiles on celebrities, or editing trend stories about which products and spa services were legit. I often wore no makeup, ripped band tees under vintage Comme des Garçons blazers, and either my black Nike dunks or Balenciaga slingback pumps I got for a fraction of the price at Barneys New York. I still don’t wear makeup but it feels less directional these days, perhaps because the spa services are no longer (or the bags under my eyes are forever). For the last couple of years, what I’ve put on my new body has been solely based on three simple questions:
Is it clean? Does it allow for easy access? Is it directly in front of me right this second?
You can understand, then, the excitement I had the other day when I actually felt the urge to want to get dressed. The impetus? My five-year-old daughter, Sol.
She and I were running out to buy produce at a local farm stand (yes, I’m now “out” of the city, too, in New Jersey), and we were late, as usual. As I waited impatiently in the kitchen for Sol to get dressed, I heard a click-clacking sound from across the house. Moments later, she arrived wearing a blue and white peplum tank top, olive green, heart-print baggy pants, and my turquoise heeled sandals from Maryam Nassir Zadeh.
“I’m ready,” she said as she stumbled past me towards the garage. Besides the fact that we immediately traded my beloved stilettos for her sparkly blue play heels with a pink flower jewel at the toe, I had, quite honestly, no notes on her outfit. I looked down at my tan Birkenstocks, wide-legged cargo pants, and ripped black tee—was I even wearing a bra?—and felt, well, underdressed. Did my kid know more about fashion than I did?
As it turns out, I’m not alone in looking to my children for fashion guidance.
“We’re always saying, ‘Make it more playful, more childlike, more darling!’” says the mom, stylist, and costume designer Chloé Badawy, 39, who dreams up daring red carpet looks with the record producer and songwriter Benny Blanco. Lately, she’s found inspiration for her client and childhood friend from classic fairy tales and animations, and specialty pop-up books such as The Little Prince, and doodles of fairies by her daughters, Gaia Rose and Kali Asha, aka Baby Sha-sha, who are four and two, respectively.
Take, for instance, Blanco’s look at the 2024 Emmy’s alongside fiancé Selena Gomez: A custom three-piece black tuxedo suit with chandelier-like embellishments and gun-metal beading. The hand embroidery from India was inspired by a drawing of flowers with long twisting vines by Gaia. “I just cleaned it up a bit,” says Badawy, explaining the importance of bringing a child-like spirit to her creative work. “It’s dress up!”
Left: Record producer and songwriter Benny Blanco in a custom two-piece denim look by Badawy. Right: Stylist Chloé Badawy’s daughter Gaia Rose, 4.
Blanco’s cream cashmere chenille suit designed in collaboration with The Elder Statesman for the 2025 Golden Globes? “I was inspired by a teddy bear,” Badawy says of the suit’s plushness, a choice that made the all-white look that much more interesting (and nods to the musician’s beloved bear costume in the 2019 music video for Blanco and Gomez’s “I Can’t Get Enough.”) “If I put Benny in a regular old tuxedo he’ll just be like, ‘No, this is an adult outfit, I don’t want to look like an adult!’” When a look isn’t working, the artist has been known to point to the children, who often come to set with their mother wearing embroidered shirts and dresses or roomy Japanese-style baby pants and say, “Wait, what’s that outfit? I want to wear that!”
Age isn’t all of it, but I’d be lying if I said it isn’t some of it. Wanting to dress like a kid has a lot to do with simply wanting to feel like a kid again, no matter your age. The fashion turned interiors designer Abra Boero, who founded Off Season, a line inspired by the urban shoreline of Rockaway Beach, Queens, puts it plainly: “Why should I present any older than I have to?” At 41 with two children, Boero says she leans more into streetwear and loose-fitting clothes now that she doesn’t feel the pressure to look buttoned-up and put together, which for her meant feminine blouses, pressed linen trousers and heels. Boero is redefining what chic means to her, and why shouldn’t she? It doesn’t make her or us any less professional or badass if we dress with a more playful attitude. It’s a reclamation of style, in many ways.
The author with her daughter Sol, 5, and son Benny, 20 months.
The key to making a more relaxed look work as a mother and professional adult is by pairing youthful pieces with grown-up signifiers, says Boero, who accessorizes her everyday uniform—men’s Carhartt pants bought off eBay and a big white tee—with silver hoops by Sophie Buhai and a Cartier Tank her husband gave her for their 10-year wedding anniversary. “Color and silhouette help—movement too,” Boero says about the things kids naturally gravitate towards when choosing what to wear.
I asked Sol how she goes about picking her clothes for the day. Does she consider the weather? “Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t,” she says as she draws with a blue marker in a Taylor Swift coloring book.
Does she consider the occasion? “I don’t ever worry about what Mrs. Taquinto says,” she says of her kindergarten teacher, who has a strict no short-sleeves rule in the classroom during winter.
Does she think about what her friends are wearing? “Oh no, we try not to copy each other.”
“It’s easy, Mama,” she continues as she begins to color the palm of her hand. “You just look at a dress, and if you don’t want it, you look at something else.”
It reminded me of a day this past summer when I found Sol looking at herself in the full-length mirror in my room. “It’s just not my vibe!” She screamed at her reflection. Upon my request, she was trying on one of my favorite band tees. It had dolphins drawn in all colors of the rainbow, and I had cut it to fit her five-year-old frame. What possibly could be wrong? It felt like me, not her, she tried to explain, before changing her top and putting on a transparent white tutu over blue shorts with contrasting appliqué trim.
The Only Jane’s Jane Herman with her daughter Georgia, 6.
That’s another thing we lost along the way—at least me, who is once again closer to the beautiful and confusing days of early motherhood than not: Confidence. And no amount of Googling “cool mom fashion” or liking look after look of Chlöe Sevigny is going to get me more confidence. Kids, though, have enough of it to go around.
Leti Sala, the 35-year-old mom and author based in Barcelona, Spain, understands Sol’s predicament. Once Sala, who describes her professional style as practical and “somewhat sober,” was invited to a fashion event, in which she was asked to wear a strappy black dress by Paco Rabanne. The neckline plunged well below her comfort zone, and the bottom was adorned with dangling geometric jewels that made noise with every step.
“I wasn’t sure about it until Cleo came in and went crazy over the jewels, the noise—everything!” says Sala of her now three-year-old, who didn’t even notice her bare décolletage. “She was having so much fun, and it made me have fun. That’s the magic of kids: their capacity for astonishment. As adults, I think we lose that.”
As I began to understand my winter wardrobe, I gravitated towards soft knits over love-worn shirts. My favorite was given to me by a close friend who believes every outfit should contain an element of surf or skate. It is lilac, long-sleeved, and has an animated oyster on a surfboard with the words “Do it in the raw” on the front.
My pants these days read cool in fit and require zero fuss: vintage military camos with purple paint splashed across the left leg, courtesy of my baby Benny, and a pair of mid-rise style jeans with a slightly tapered leg by The Only Jane called “The Georgia.” The designer, Jane Herman, named the pants after her daughter. “I’m a deeply sentimental person when it comes to clothes,” she says.
As for outerwear, I was recently handed down a men’s Dunhill coat in the softest camel hair blend that was brutally attacked by moths. After multiple failed attempts at dry cleaners refusing to repair the double-breasted coat, a friend suggested I simply “fuck it up more” with colorful stitching or patches.
Designer Abra Boero with her son Augustus, 3.
I sent it to a tailor named Thao Huynh whom I had worked on a few projects with during my time in magazines, along with two reference photos: a color-blocked, wool button-down jacket by the heirloom-obsessed clothing brand Bode, featuring stitches of star-shaped flowers down the sleeve, and a messy web of multi-colored yarn from Sol’s first attempt at crochet. Her pattern is inspired, with strings chaotically climbing over each other with no rhyme or reason. A few weeks later, Huynh sent the coat back to me, all patched up with embroidered stars in colors of hunter green, lime green, and baby blue. To cover two large holes at the shoulder and cuff, Huynh used a visible mending technique called darning, which is inspired by Japanese sashiko stitching, though without the pattern. An additional thread of light pink is featured in the cross stitch and reminds my daughter of her Easter basket.
Every time I wear it, people either stop me to ask where I bought it or alert me that I’m “covered in stickers.” One woman at a doctor’s office said, “Oh no, there is glitter all over your beautiful coat!” I laughed at her remark, thankful I was the least-adult adult in the room.
Branch in her mended coat and Sol, wearing Batsheva
