Mommy Chic

I cut my hair a few months ago.  I know, I know: what is it about new moms going and chopping off all of their hair?  Well, I have two theories:

1. When you are pregnant, your hair gets AH-mazing.  Prell-commercial fabulous.  When you are hair challenged, as I am, this is a wonderful side benefit of the whole human-condominium thing.  But then when you have your baby and your hormones drop, like, overnight, all of that fabulous hair falls out in giant clumpfuls.  (I’m sorry…if you haven’t had kids yet I am probably freaking you out right about now.)  So that lush mane becomes a stringy mess and of course you don’t have time to blow it dry/style it/manage it in any way (you have kids now, remember?).  Bring on the scissors!

2.  Your life, as you knew it, is in chaos.  Short hair = one less thing.

So I cut my hair a few months ago.  I brought in a picture of Emma Roberts at the Academy Awards or some premier or something and hoped I would wind up looking like her.  That did not happen, but I do like the cut and it manages to make my hair look thickish and it is enough of a “style” that I don’t have to actually style it.  Not that I ever did.

It’s kind of funny that I don’t take very good care of my hair, because I am actually completely obsessed with style.  When I am not obsessing over my children and their eating and sleeping habits, I am reading Vogue cover-to-cover.  I even wrote my Senior thesis at Princeton on the evolution of the women’s magazine.

This is not to say that I look good all the time, but I like to have fun with clothes and am particularly interested in translating fah-bulous magazine looks into practical and budget-friendly outfits.  I love me a sale, and will confess to something of a Gilt problem (blush patent-leather stilettos at a steal?  Why not?!?!).

Motherhood has — obviously — had an enormous impact on how I dress.  For one thing, there’s the whole “your body will never be the same shape again” issue; for another, I am now rarely in situations where my (beloved and copious) high heels are appropriate.  Those cobalt-blue, 4-inch snakeskins don’t exactly cut it on the playground, and even though I was quick to embrace sequins for daywear, Babygirl has a frustrating habit of trying to gnaw them off my clothes while I’m carrying her.  Especially now that I am only in the office a few days out of the workweek — and my office is crazy-casual — I embrace any excuse to get out of the blue-jeans rut.

So you can imagine my thrill when my great friend from college, the astonishingly talented aesthete/designer/blogger Jessica Ahnert Davis asked me to guest write on her design blog, The Eagle’s Nest, about mommy chic.  “Stylin’ Mamas” now runs every other Wednesday, and you can check it out — along with the rest of her fabulously-beautiful lifestyle writing and imagery — here!