When Tania Arrayales Stafford turned pregnant along with her first baby in 2019, she had one thing of a closet disaster. The maternity attire market was, in a phrase, daunting, ripe for the form of clothes waste she had made it her mission to keep away from. And I do imply that actually: Stafford is the co-founder of Trend of Tomorrow, an advocacy group that strives for a extra moral and sustainable trend business. Maternity garments — the very essence of that are predicated on a speedy, nine-month lifespan — posed an issue of each private {and professional} significance.
“I knew I did not need to purchase new issues I used to be solely going to put on for just a few months,” Stafford says, “after which what was I going to do with them?” She thought of thrifting to be a viable different, however alas: “There was no place I might go for that.”
When the secondhand maternity market left her disenchanted, she turned to investing in a number of non-maternity kinds in a much bigger dimension. It labored, for probably the most half.
“You do not actually assume you want maternity garments,” she says. “You in all probability purchase just a few tops or leggings right here and there. However apart from that, you do not want an entire new wardrobe till your third trimester whenever you’re large, and, at that time, you are solely going to be sporting it for 3 months, if that.”
But, for retailers, these are some profitable three months. Maternity put on is huge enterprise: As of 2018, it was valued at $18.3 billion, and it is solely rising, increasing at an annual compound progress charge of 4.3% via 2025. However for pregnant individuals like Stafford, the query wasn’t essentially what to put on, however somewhat what to do with these newly-acquired smocked clothes when her three months had been up. It is not like there’s an accessible resale platform devoted to maternity garments. (Belief me, I am pregnant myself. I’ve checked.)
The factor is, pregnant individuals have been lending and borrowing their maternity garb in a gloriously offline, peer-to-peer cycle for many years. This is not simply true for the stuff you put on whenever you’re anticipating: Solely just lately have resale and rental platforms exploded to codify and monetize these transactions. For pregnant individuals, although, the normal rental, resale or in any other case “round” buying channels you see coated on web sites like this one are few and much between — in any form of sturdy sense, at the least. The market is not precisely void of choices; it might simply be a query of how, and never the place, you look.
It wasn’t only a couple many years in the past that pregnant individuals had remarkably restricted choices for clothes, the vast majority of which had been designed to cover the being pregnant in a modest, tent-like trend. And as Michelle Gabriel, a lecturer in Sustainable Trend Technique at Glasgow Caledonian New York School, jogs my memory, precisely none of it was thought of “trend.” (In spite of everything, Vogue did not characteristic its first pregnant cowl mannequin, Brooke Shields, till 2003.)
“Pants had been practically out of the query till the Eighties, and even that was small-scale and comparatively inaccessible for most ladies within the U.S.,” she says. “The Nineteen Nineties allowed being pregnant to be celebrated in celeb trend, which shifted the cultural expectation of what a pregnant lady might or ought to seem like. Clothes may very well be attractive or fitted or informal, and the particular person may very well be pregnant.”
By 2021, the maternity attire sector has grown throughout value factors and retailers. Yow will discover modern kinds at devoted maternity labels like Storq or fast-fashion alternate options at ASOS. The most important international maternity model, Gabriel says, is Vacation spot Maternity, the dad or mum firm of mall manufacturers A Pea in a Pod and Motherhood Maternity.
Maternity put on could have entrenched itself in a form of folksy, hand-me-down cult of character, however that is no cottage operation. With greater than 1,000 workers and a reported 458 shops, Vacation spot Maternity racks up between $100-$200 million in income annually. If there was one participant to implement a critical take- or buy-back operation, it might be them. Nevertheless it’s not simply Vacation spot Maternity that is primed to take part in a circular-leaning financial system: Gabriel believes the entire market is primed for it.
“I would argue that maternity has the longest historical past and sure the very best stage of reuse of any class of clothes due to this understanding that the clothes merchandise solely has worth for the wearer for a brief time period,” she says.
So, why aren’t extra end-of-life product choices functionally accessible for pregnant individuals? Gabriel has the reply to that, too.
First, she says, a pregnant physique, identical to many different physique sorts, is exterior the aspirational trend physique supreme. Second, the kind of manufacturers carried on blue-chip resale or rental platforms — which carry higher-end trend together with modern, designer and above — do not sometimes make maternity clothes. This is not to say that marketplaces like The RealReal, Lease the Runway or Vestiaire Collective do not provide maternity wares. They do, however the choices are small, and sometimes confined to only a handful of manufacturers.
At press time, Lease the Runway had 148 devoted “Maternity & Nursing Types” accessible for subscribers. Examine that to its “Trip” part, which housed 495 clothes — 9 full pages — of festive, sun-soaked garb. Now, theoretically, would not your beachy apparel have a a lot shorter use-case than the garments you put on whereas rising a human for months on finish?
“Excessive-end on-line trend resale corporations peddle in the identical cultural tropes that high-end trend manufacturers themselves are buying and selling in, probably the most important of which is class aspiration,” Gabriel says. “In falling exterior of that narrowly outlined imaginative and prescient of what’s aspirational in trend, pregnant persons are usually not noted of higher-end trend consideration.”
Mass-market retailers — like Vacation spot Maternity, certainly — take into account aspiration otherwise. The identical is true for resale platforms. Take on-line consignment market Thredup, which, with the assistance of its annual Resale Reviews, has labored laborious to cement itself because the eyes and ears of the secondhand clothes market. Its maternity part, Gabriel says, has grown exponentially, however a list downside could quickly develop into inevitable: The high-end market would not have a lot product for pregnant our bodies that may then be resold on a secondary market, interval. Nonetheless, choices abound exterior capital-F Trend’s 4 unique partitions.
“There is a comparatively sturdy secondhand marketplace for maternity clothes,” Gabriel says. “It is simply occurring on the mass or reasonably priced trend stage at corporations like Thredup, to not point out numerous mom-and-pop secondhand shops solely targeted on [that].”
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Storq’s Instagram-beloved Signature Bike Shorts, priced at $58, come licensed by Oeko-Tex’s Customary 100.
Picture: Courtesy of Storq
As a result of that is 2021, these hyper-local choices additionally exist on-line, most prevalently on Fb, the place teams welcome dad and mom trying to purchase and promote used maternity garments, toys and child gear. It is fairly often the place you will discover clothes on the lowest value, with order success usually being as simple as in-person drop-off throughout city. Stafford, who’s based mostly in New York Metropolis, joined certainly one of these teams after she gave delivery.
“We do share a number of info, however we additionally promote loads to one another,” she says. “It creates this cult following. You’ve gotten a group the place you may resell and purchase and get concepts from.”
Storq, a recent line of what it calls “each day necessities” for being pregnant, is contemplating maternity put on from one other perspective: What if we put a brand new premium on cost-per-wear, not only for pregnant individuals?
On the time that finest friends-turned-business companions Grace Kapin and Courtney Klein co-founded Storq in 2014, neither had been pregnant. However a scarcity of gestational expertise themselves did not preclude them from understanding what was intrinsically flawed with maternity put on and the attitudes that encompass it. The label has stored the identical tagline because it launched its first assortment seven years in the past: “You do not want an entire new wardrobe, simply the fundamentals.”
With simply 16 elevated kinds, Storq’s small-but-mighty maternity line-up bucks the class’s age-old custom of ruched seams, scratchy materials and flouncy ruffles. (Oh my god, simply so, so many ruffles.) Its signature garment is arguably its Instagram-beloved leopard-printed bike shorts, which come licensed by Oeko-Tex’s Customary 100, one of many world’s best-known labels for textiles examined for dangerous substances.
“From the very starting, Storq was predicated on an understanding that, holistically, this can be a troublesome time to be making purchases,” Kapin says. “You’ve gotten a number of monetary issues in your thoughts, and trend goes manner right down to the underside of the listing. So we’re at all times attempting to consider easy methods to maximize your buy, easy methods to make it in order that this is not one thing that simply finally ends up on the highest of the landfill.”
Whereas the model remains to be finalizing the information internally, Kapin and Klein declare their clients put on their Storq items a median of 5 occasions per week, for a roughly six-month window throughout and after their pregnancies. And when you’re sporting one thing 5 occasions per week for six months, Klein suggests, that piece of clothes is seeing much more put on than most gadgets in your closet.
The difficulty is, we have develop into so reliant on overconsumption that our retail infrastructure merely would not promote a price-per-wear mentality, not to mention have the bandwidth to assist sensible reuse choices. A 2016 McKinsey & Firm examine discovered that, as of 2014 — the identical yr Kapin and Klein launched Storq — the common shopper purchased 60% extra clothes than that they had in 2000, however stored every garment half as lengthy. And on common, People are throwing away 81 kilos of textiles per particular person, per yr. By adjusting the way in which we take into consideration what it means to put on a garment, can we additionally regulate what it means after we’re accomplished with that garment? That is what Storq is looking for out.
“It makes me take into consideration how individuals do not hesitate to make huge impulse buys for a visit or after they have an occasion developing,” Kapin says. “Individuals categorize issues otherwise of their thoughts. And in terms of maternity, the resistance is excessive, and it places the onus on us to create a number of worth, the place most corporations and classes do not have that stress to have one thing that matches when your physique is altering from everyday.”
That distinct stress maternity retailers face? It is good, truly, for manufacturers to really feel compelled to promote worth — and for shoppers to discover ways to prioritize. Gabriel, the Glasgow Caledonian New York School lecturer, argues that maternity put on is without doubt one of the most acutely aware classes there’s. Fairly than serving because the ill-fitting black sheep of the attire world, it might truly cleared the path after we take into account the place clothes must go subsequent.
“Due to that well-understood restricted use, customers are extra thoughtful of their determination to buy,” Gabriel says. “If I am solely going to put on this ‘X’ variety of occasions, is it price $100? That is a dialog sustainability advocates are hoping individuals could have each time they make a clothes buy, not simply when buying maternity clothes.”
It is why she feels the maternity sector is extra primed for a take- or buy-back mannequin than different ready-to-wear classes, if solely owing to shopper conduct. Maternity corporations, she says, have already got resale fashions to look to, and whereas the availability chains will not be excellent, it might imply big-box retailers like Vacation spot Maternity would not be ranging from sq. one.
Maternity has one different secret weapon, and that is its buyer base. Pregnant customers already know easy methods to have interaction within the take- and buy-back dynamic due to the prevalence of the observe for maternity clothes.
Nonetheless, true circularity — through which each single element of each single garment made and used is integrated again into the system — remains to be many, many, many steps away. Gabriel goes as far as to recommend a number of generations away, actually. The intention is obvious, it is simply the route ahead that is slightly sticky, and really presumably clad in a paper-thin graphic tee that reads Pregnant AF.
“It is the identical recommendation I would give to anybody attempting to be acutely aware about their clothes and searching for to mitigate destructive penalties of their purchases,” Gabriel says. “Do not buy greater than you actually need. Purchase what’s most versatile and practical for you and your life. Think about on the buying stage how you will handle the clothes as soon as it is now not helpful to you. Purchase used, if doable.”
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