In an east London church hall, a pair of pink dungarees covered in red faces winks at me from one corner. Milling by the coffee stand is another pair, this time in workhorse blue denim. My bung-on-with-anything black ones are in the wash, otherwise they might be here, too. From the sand pits to the ball pits, and every baby and toddler class in between, someone will be wearing a baggy pair of dungarees.
Brighton-based brand Lucy & Yak is leading the charge. Since launching in 2017, it has become the go-to for the all-in-one market in the same way that Zara’s spotty dress ruled floaty daywear in the summer of 2019.
The straps are one factor. “We often hear that [they] are really popular with new mums,” says co-founder Lucy Greenwood, as they are “easy to adjust and loosen for breastfeeding when out and about.” Certain designs prove popular for their lack of a waistband, which, she says, “is ideal for changing bodies”. Comfort, though, is king. “Naturally this is important for everyone, but especially so when you’re a new mum.”
Dressing as a new mum is tricky. Even Rihanna found it hard. As she says in her recent Vogue interview, “dressing for pregnancy was such a piece of cake … But dressing in postpartum, what the fuck do you do?” What indeed. As Rihanna says: “You don’t know what to put on. Everything is too small or too big.”
Although they may not necessarily be to Rihanna’s taste, this is where baggy dungies come in. They may look inelegant and a bit infantilising, but for me they also feel forgiving of a body in flux. Without hard lines or waistbands, they were gentle on my C-section scar in those early months. Plus, at a time when a pair of old, ill-fitting jeans can become a totem of a former self, a pair of unapologetically baggy dungarees can take the pressure off, allowing you to slip into them like a knife into warm butter without having to confront a weary, changing body.
While Lucy & Yaks are the It Follows of the genre, relentlessly appearing everywhere from stay-and-plays to library rhyme times, baggy all-in-ones have become an unofficial uniform of new mums. From MC Overalls overalls to Cos jumpsuits, they stay the course, moulding to growing bodies then shifting to postpartum mode, in keeping with the increased emphasis in recent years on not buying a whole new wardrobe for pregnancy.
“Baggy dungarees are great when you don’t want to show off your body,” says Prof Carolyn Mair, a behavioural psychologist, business consultant and author of The Psychology of Fashion, “or when your body isn’t the most important thing on your mind (like when you’ve just had a baby).”
If you don’t want to hide your figure exactly, but equally don’t want to draw attention to an area of yourself that has gone from huge and taut to spent, they provide cover.
Back to Rihanna and her refusal to buy into “maternity clothes”, preferring low jeans and bare bumps to peplums and floaty frocks. It chimes with a lot of people not feeling themselves in the template laid out by traditional maternity clothes. I tried on a few, such as stretchy T-shirts and wrap dresses – all felt strange and discombobulating, faraway from my usual style.
While they aren’t exactly the shiny red breastplates or bump-baring pink padded jackets favoured by Rihanna, they do offer a mundane equivalent, sitting more comfortably with many women’s pre-baby identities and wardrobes. Naomi Raybould set up Beyond Nine, a maternity brand of sorts, during her second pregnancy. “Just because I was pregnant didn’t mean I wanted to completely change my style,” she says, “especially at a time (particularly first time) when you are experiencing a big shift in identity.”
Dungarees are the perfect segue from pre-baby to babe in arms, dodging the need for clothes that are specifically maternity wear, which, despite being a big market – globally it was estimated at US$21bn in 2022 – also have a limited shelf life, making them bad for the planet as well as a bad investment.
They are tried and tested – it is a look many women have reached for in the past. Throughout the 1980s, the decade when she had both sons, Diana, Princess of Wales was pictured in yellow ones, blue ones and aspirationally clean white ones. Raybould was “initially inspired by some jumpsuits my mum lent me that she wore in the 80s when she was pregnant”. Mair adds some context: “In the late 70s/80s dungarees were associated with the ‘mother earth’ style of fashion, self-sufficiency and growing your own.” Maybe that could go for babies as well as marrows.
They are doggedly practical in – almost – all regards. “Running around after little ones, your movement is not in any way restricted,” says Raybould, “and they also require you to put very little thought into getting dressed. You can chuck one thing on and you’re good to go – gold dust for a time-poor new mum.” With limited bandwidth left after sleep windows, weaning and tongue-tie, dungarees feel liberatingly easy.
For Mair there could be something deeper going on with the idea of a uniform for new mums. “Being part of a community is super important for all of us and especially for new mums who might feel isolated,” she says. Maternal loneliness is real, even for those fortunate enough to have free local groups and nearby parents or friends, so wearing something akin to a football strip – showing up in the stripes of your new team – could be a sartorial bid to find solace and company.
A pair of iris-coloured overalls from Beyond Nine have been the garment I have reached for most in the first 16 months of my daughter’s life. Poppers allowed the waist to be cinched when the fit became too roomy; they are a decorative colour but in a silhouette that signals graft. I wonder whether there is something in wearing workwear-inspired garments at a time when women are taking a break from the workforce, temporarily shedding some of the identity that a job can lend. “Potentially,” says Mair. “Work plays a very important role in our identity, so being out of the workforce can make us feel less worthy.” Never more so than in a country where the working culture can feel unbending to the needs of new parents.
It is likely significant that dungarees are not worn for work of the pen-pushing kind. “They are associated with hard and dirty work,” Mair says. “The wearer might feel they can tackle any job when wearing them, and babies are messy, so this fashion seems like the perfect solution.”
