Great Expectations
When I discovered that i was pregnant last year, my friend Joy gave me a copy of “The Girlfriends’ Guide to Pregnancy,” Vicki Iovine’s mega-selling dish on what to really expect when you’re expecting. Since I hadn’t had any morning sickness, bouts of exhaustion or constipation--or married a knuckle-dragger who could barely grunt out any understanding of my miraculous growing body (apparently a common problem in the Malibu author’s circle)--I skipped ahead to the chapter that addressed my immediate concern: Looking the Best You Can. It offered practical information about maternity clothes, but when I got to the part about stirrup pants being her big “fashion secret” for covering up fat ankles, I experienced my first wave of nausea. This from a woman who’s married to the record producer who signed Marilyn Manson? Obviously I’d have to crack the code myself.
My first discovery: Anyone who’s anyone who’s pregnant in L.A. does prenatal yoga at Golden Bridge with the luminescent Gurmukh. Not only is the energy generated by 50 chanting mamas incredible, it’s also the best place in town to see what pregnant women really look like. Some women come to class in labor and they’re barely showing; others are so big at six months that they simply cannot get any bigger--then they do. Even among women at the same stage of pregnancy, the variety is impressive. But here’s one thing they have in common: Nobody’s trying to hide their fat ankles under an ‘80s fashion nightmare. The studio is often full of women of all sizes wearing snug baby-Ts and regular drawstring yoga pants slung low below a belly decorated with a swirl of crystal appliques. The style is about celebrating the voluptuousness of motherhood.
Of course, it’s one thing to let it all hang out and wear your too-tight pre-pregnancy clothes to yoga, and another thing to wear them to lunch at The Grill. But that’s the beauty of being with child in Los Angeles: Short, tight and belly-baring is the city’s latest look in maternity fashion. What a relief to find out that I could waddle around with my shirt hiked up and my pants pulled down and be at fashion’s cutting edge. It’s like the newest version of the “I’m Not Fat, I’m Pregnant” T-shirt.
These days, maternity clothes are contemporary and fitted, thanks in large part to the availability of stretch-cotton fabrics. Pants with a front elastic panel sewn into an otherwise inelastic fabric are pretty much history, as are the dopey tents with neck and arm holes designed to conceal a pregnancy. The styles at mainstream outlets such as Motherhood Maternity and Gap Maternity (available online only) and Target’s In Due Time line are cute, affordable and cut to highlight the ever-growing mystical pod. But there’s nothing risky about these collections, which still feature tops that hit below the hip and cover the belly.
But boutiques such as Naissance on Melrose (NOM) tell a different L.A. story. Their motto: Stylish. Sexy. Pregnant. A maternity boutique that also offers nursery furniture and custom bedding upstairs, it has original designs on par with the whole groovy Melrose scene, and prices to match. Until recently, they had an outlet in Calabasas where I picked up some of the same pieces at a deep discount. It’s where I bought the prized items of my maternity wardrobe: a fuzzy, cleavage-accentuating pink sweater with red ribbon ties at the elbows and a scoop neckline, and a stretch-corduroy pencil skirt with silver studs down the sides and a fringe hem. Unfortunately, I had no idea how roasting hot I would be throughout my pregnancy, making it nearly impossible to wear the sweater even in the dead of a Los Angeles winter.
Japanese Weekend--recently opened at the Paseo Colorado in Pasadena--is another favorite, offering a complete line of fitted maternity and nursing wear, including the basics, evening wear, swimwear and a great selection of underwear and lingerie. Pants, skirts and shorts are cut in their signature hip-hugger style; a wide elastic-fabric band shows off the belly and helps support the lower back. Beautiful stretch-knit fabrics highlight the new curves, and they’re also doing some really cool stuff with faux suede.
As with any kind of radical chic, there are a few things to keep in mind.
One: Not everyone will approve. Strangers often gave me critical looks whenever I exposed my still-an-innie navel. When my 75-year-old mother came to visit from Chicago, she kept trying to pull my shirt down and was in a serious panic over my outfit for the baby shower. “You’re not going to have a bare belly are you? Are you?” she asked repeatedly. After all the crazy, unconventional and downright deviant things I’ve done in my life, this is what she decides to pick as her big morality crusade? Chalk it up to a different generation. After all, in the decades when my mother was pregnant, you couldn’t even say the word in an American feature film or on television, much less show a visibly pregnant woman on screen, even if she was wearing Balenciaga.
Two: Expect annoying comments on your size. Though I was carrying the baby “all in front,” as they say, I believe I received so many unsolicited observations because I wore fitted clothes--and most people think that when your clothes are that tight you must be ready to pop.
Three: In the third trimester, you may want to wear a tent. Really. The truth is, all of the great clothes are made for the second trimester--when you’re far enough along to visibly celebrate your pregnancy, but not so far along that you need a bib when you’re eating because you can’t get within three feet of the table and food keeps falling on your shirt because your lap has disappeared.
In the final weeks of my pregnancy, I had outgrown nearly all of my funky maternity clothes, and I couldn’t stand the idea of wearing anything tight, especially polyester. I wanted the loose cotton, billowy goddess look and was ready to pay top dollar for it. Inside the high-end A Pea in the Pod in Beverly Hills, the walls are decorated with glamorous photos of semi-celebrities doing the sexy, belly-baring thing: Eddie Murphy’s wife; Vanna White; Mrs. Larry King, etc. Not a good sign. “Do you have any of those old-fashioned pregnancy tents?” I asked the salesperson. She burst out laughing, but I wasn’t kidding. With Miss Manners etiquette, she suggested that I might want something below the knee because, well, at a certain point it becomes impossible to sit with your legs closed, making short hemlines impractical. I graciously tried on every item she brought into the dressing room, though nothing was billowy and nothing fit. I repeated the experience next door at the very posh Liz Lange Maternity, where I was informed that “everything’s very fitted these days.”
I, who had always embraced my rapidly ripening body, was now on the verge of tears. I’d never been shopping where everything in the store was too small. It wasn’t just the tight clothes that made me look so gigantic: In the end, I weighed 194 pounds. I have a miracle happening inside of me, I reminded myself. How dare I be so vain, so superficial, so L.A.? Yet the reality is that it’s hard to gain almost 60 pounds, and even harder to do it in a city with the greatest concentration in the world of hot babes in low-rise jeans.
My salvation finally arrived in the form of an ugly purple size 20 muumuu from a Hollywood thrift store that cost me exactly $1--and even that was hard to find. It was a hideous yet practical purchase: the weather was hot, I was huge. But the more I thought about it, the more I felt that a muumuu could actually be kind of cool, in a retro way, an interpretation of geek chic for hip mamas. Accessorize with some jeweled flip-flops, a tiki-hut bag and a pair of oversize pink sunglasses with white plastic frames, and there you go: the next trend. See? This is the beauty of being with child in Los Angeles.
On March 4, at 8:09 in the morning, I gave birth to a healthy and perfectly average-size baby boy, Marson Peach Casimir Von Wilder Palac Rice. It was, without question, the most amazing moment of my entire life. So far, not a day has gone by without my looking into his blueberry eyes and shedding tears of awe and gratitude over his very existence.
These days, who needs street clothes? I spend most days hanging around the house wearing the latest in fetish wear: a nursing bra that could fit Divine underneath a “Daddy’s Girl” T-shirt and, because of the Caesarean birth, comfy granny panties that come up to my armpits. But it’s a look I wouldn’t trade for anything in the world.
*
Lisa Palac last wrote for the magazine about the Taiwanese boba drink.
