Navigating fashion trends as an older millennial mother

I'm just an aging millennial mom, standing in front of a TikTok influencer, asking her to tell me what to wear.

Wearing my on-trend “loose” jeans. They’re not super flattering, but they do the job as I await the inevitable triumphant return of the skinny jean.

I’ve never been more aware that I’m getting older than over this past year, and that’s mostly due to current fashion trends.

The double whammy of new motherhood combined with the pandemic really took a toll on my fashion sense. My uniform became comfy loungewear, which is really just another way of saying I wore pajamas 24/7. I wasn’t going anywhere or seeing anyone, and I didn’t exactly feel the need to dress up for making slime with my kids.

Once the world re-opened and I had to return to being a regular human again, I discovered that fashion had somehow done a complete 180.

I scrolled deep into the depths of TikTok, dissecting the clothing choices of the modern day woman. None of it made sense to my overwhelmed, exhausted millennial mom brain.

Oversized clothing was in, but so were crop tops. Everything from the ‘90s had somehow returned, which both intrigued and disoriented me. It’s like I went to sleep, woke up, and suddenly so much time had passed that the fashion of my youth was now cool again, but in a retro, kind of ironic way that made me feel incredibly old.

And then—the jeans.

It wasn’t as simple as opening my drawer and wiggling back into my skinny jeans. In fact, skinny jeans were now a fashion faux pas, and the unfortunate target of Gen Z mockery. Plus, they also didn’t fit (see: childbearing + lockdown).

In my attempt to bring my jean game into the current decade, I was met with a bewildering array of choices: wide leg, loose leg, tapered leg, flared leg, bootcut, straight leg, mom jeans, dad jeans (?!). Everything was in style except for my maligned skinnies.

I gradually transitioned to straight jeans, which felt like a close enough cousin to skinny jeans to not completely derail my sense of self. But I needed a couple more pairs and still wanted to try out some of these new-but-actually-old, totally confounding styles.

Mom jeans! I smugly thought. I’m a mom! These jeans are literally made for me!

So I tried on some mom jeans, and swiftly concluded that “mom jeans” are a misnomer, or some kind of cruel prank intended to make moms cry in change rooms.

After trying on approximately one million pairs of jeans and returning and exchanging for new sizes and new styles, I eventually found a couple that didn’t make me want to drown in my denim-soaked tears. I now own a loose pair, a wide pair, some straights, and some I just can’t be bothered trying to define.

But the jean journey is just the tip of the metamorphic fashion iceberg. I’m constantly trying to figure out what I should wear as a nearly forty-year-old woman who is gradually becoming a full person again after hibernating for the past several years.

Does this shirt make me look too old? Too young? Do I even care?

It’s an ongoing struggle, but I think I’m slowly solidifying my style for this new phase of life. And I’m certain by the time I unravel the mysteries of modern fashion, the whole thing will change again, anyway.

Of course, I’m still planning to spend most of my waking hours in stretchy pants and cozy sweatshirts. But it’s nice to have options and remind myself that even though I’m not a trendy twenty-two-year-old anymore, I’m also not ready to completely abandon my sense of style just yet.

Now please excuse me as I go back to googling “jeans that feel like jeggings that aren’t jeggings” and “should I tuck my shirt into my bike shorts.”

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Things I’m enjoying right now 😍

• Claire Zulkey
  envisions life as a tradwife

• Connie Schultz
  on womanly ambition

• Andrea Gibson
  on finding gratitude in the chemo room

• kate lindsay
  notices that social media isn’t social anymore

• Lee Tilghman
  on always wanting the next thing

• Emily Writes
  features a teen who describes living with OCD

• Nora McInerny
  on not wishing away the good stuff

• Normal People on Prime/Hulu

• This interactive piece from NYT about being a thirteen year-old girl today

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