My Maternity Style Is Defined By Below-the-Bump Dressing

A few months ago, before I had formally announced my pregnancy, I was tapped to host a show in Paris during fashion month. When talking to the house’s team, I became increasingly nervous and asked my friend, “Do you think they’ll hire me if they know I’m almost five months pregnant?”

Joke was on me. The label had already gathered that I was knocked up thanks to a few obvious photos on Instagram, and they were thrilled. In fact, the styling team accommodated my expanding body and pulled a long, cozy gray turtleneck that elegantly swooped over my midsection and even accentuated my stomach. A charming goose belly! On the third day working on the project, I wore a cream and orange leather jacket with snap buttons, which I opened to let my stomach out to attend the house’s afterparty. No more hiding!

The moment reminded me that if I don’t want to buy anything maternity for my wardrobe, I don’t have to. There was also a vindication that I don’t have to hide my pregnancy. (Note: I no longer work full-time in an office, which is a privilege, and I can take liberties when getting dressed.) I hate hearing that expecting women feel the need to hide their pregnancy when it comes to their careers! No one should feel that pressure—let them be!

Currently, I style all of my maternity looks below the bump, which means the bump is out. These days, when I wear clothes, I pretend my bump isn’t there and that I’m simply showing off my midriff as I traditionally have—although my midriff is now a hulking loaf of bread that protrudes from my body. Maybe the inspiration stems from Rihanna’s deliciously flagrant belly-baring fashion choices when she was pregnant, or Madonna trotting around London during her second pregnancy in 2000, bursting from her Union Jack T-shirt and cargo pants that hung on by the sheer grace of G-d. There was also Demi Moore going full nude on the cover of Vanity Fair in 1991. Ane lest I forget Sienna Miller walking the red carpet of the Vogue World: London in a frothy Schiaparelli number—a ruffled cream crop top and a confectionary skirt.

I’m not the only one who has gone below-the-bump. The other day at the Maimoun store opening in Williamsburg, I ran into the designer of a cool-girl Italian label. Pregnant, she wore her pants slightly unbuttoned. (Note: I tried this tactic with a zipper, and it does not work. Your pants will unzip and, consequently, fall off.) She looked fantastic. Very laissez-faire, very whatever!

Later, facialist Raquel Medina-Cleghorn sent me a photo of herself expecting, when she attended the spring 2025 Sandy Liang show. She wore dainty Little Bo Peep pink bows in her hair and donned an open cardi and low-slung jeans. “It felt really daring for me, to be honest,” Medina-Cleghorn says. “Even though I don’t dress ‘professionally’ for work, I still felt like having my midriff exposed was too intimate for that setting, so this was probably the only time I had my belly on show. Then, when I got in line to enter the show space, several people took street-style photos of me, which was slightly embarrassing because I’m not used to that, but it made me feel great.”

Wearing something below the bump is not just a style choice, either. Sometimes, it’s simply uncomfortable to wear something over the bump. I spoke with fashion editor and consultant Laurel Pantin, who gave birth to her two children before the bare-belly Rihanna era. “I really didn’t like things on top of my belly–it made my skin itchier,” she says. “The best thing I bought, which I still wear all the time, was [a pair of] The Row Thilde leggings. They sat under my bump and made me feel kind of fancy and polished.” Pantin also counts elastic waist Aritzia wide-leg pants and Tory Sport track pants as winners.

As for baring the bump? The reveal may be a visual way of saying: Let me do what I want–and wear what I want. There is a really stellar paragraph from a May 1952 issue of Vogue that’s a chic gestational call to action:

These are maternity clothes, made from Vogue Patterns. And they are not disguises. The new design theory for a woman who is having a baby: is that there are many months when she is–obviously–having a baby. Clothes that pretend she isn’t can become parodies of normal clothes, bound to fail in their mission. The theory continues: so why not admit the fact–but make the costume prettier, in color fabric, and intent than ever?

The spread goes on to show a woman in a sheeny evening jacket with a swooping oval neckline, complete with white gloves. The looks don’t scream maternity, instead, they appear like regular clothes that have been slightly altered.

Sure, I’ve skewed the Vogue 1955 philosophy to my liking, but I try to apply the ethos of not disguising my pregnancy in how I dress. Currently, I have a few pieces in rotation that let me dress below the bump, comfortably: There’s a pair of loose Nike leggings that I can shimmy down, a pair of vintage Da-Nang camo print flares that snap together, my husband’s corduroys that have a drawstring, and a great cotton print Jean Paul Gaultier skirt from the matriarch of cool, Chlöe Sevigny. There is also a pair of Still Here “Cool” jeans with both a button fly and a drawstring; I can unbutton and fasten them to keep the pants snug. (The label’s founder, Sonia Mosseri, tells me the jeans are popular for women during pregnancy and postpartum.) I’ve worn these pieces in the aisles of Key Food, at events, and for front-facing projects.

I haven’t gotten any blowback that I know of. My grandmother, who was pregnant with her first child only a few years after that 1952 Vogue maternity article, responded to an Instagram post where I was wearing stretchy, low-slung black pants, and my stomach plopped out for the world to see. She said it best: “It’s going to be the new maternity dress code.”