Posts Tagged ‘clothing’

It sucks to spend hundreds of dollars on maternity wear that you’re going to dump on Goodwill six months from now. Skinnymaternity.com, a new website launched in the Bay Area, intends to be the Craigslist of maternity and new baby gear. Got stuff to sell? List it on the site. Need something? Cruise over to see if someone else has it.

The site’s brand new and patchy right now, but hopefully it’ll fill up soon with stuff that won’t be going to a landfill instead. And let’s also hope that it will be stuff that’s a mite hipper than you find in Goodwill’s maternity section, the final resting place of all those little flowered tieback dresses from the ’80s.

Visit skinnymaternity.com.

Right after Halloween’s over, the holiday season steamrollers into our lives, and with it invitations to parties with cut-crystal drinks glasses and little girls in velvet dresses. There are plenty of pretty dresses for party-bound girls in children’s boutiques both large and small, but the selection for boys tends to make them look like either li’l funeral ushers, or Richie Rich.

Velvet & Tweed offers a more stylish silhouette for the discerning young bon vivant, special occasion clothing that looks like scaled-down version of Daddy’s dress-up clothes. Check out this little number, with pinstriped pants and a blue shirt that I bet’s the exact color of at least one of your kids’ eyes.

All of Velvet & Tweed’s clothing is designed and sewn in San Francisco under the stewardship of Tina Schreiber, a designer best known for working on the launch of Janie and Jack. Her own line shares a similar style: cush fabrics, muted colors, fine styling.

Velvet & Tweed’s line is not available yet online, but can be found in two Bay Area boutiques:  Mill Valley Baby & Kids Company, 12 Miller Avenue (at Sunnyside Avenue) in Mill Valley, www.mvbabyandkids.com, and Danville Baby & Kids Company, 760 Camino Ramon (in Rose Garden Mall) in Danville.

A healthy crop of indie boutiques have sprung up in the Bay Area to cater to our local obsession with the non-corporate and unique. They’re fun to shop in — if you happen to have a girlchild. But the pickings for baby boys are generally quite slim; a table and a rack at the back vs. rack after rack of cool girl’s clothing.

Local fashion hero Gama-Go evens the score a bit with its Gama-Goo line for infants. Gama-Goo’s onesies and T-shirts feature Asian-ish, graffiti-ish graphics that don’t make small boys look like a ruffly li’l nancy boys. Neither does the clothing contain the hyper-masculine logos pushed by chain clothing stores, where the thinking apparently goes that if it doesn’t have a dinosaur, a truck, or tools on it, your little man might as well be wearing eyeliner and a dress.

Gama-Goos are stitched up right here in San Francisco, printed in Sacto, and beloved by local parents who want something a little different. Check out the intense expression on the Tigerlily Rock T-shirt mascot. That tiger-boy is not messing around! He is about to rock. And we salute him!

Available at gama-go.com.

Not for your little one the harsh dyes and artificial fabrics you’ll find at the cheapie clothing stores like Target and Old Navy. No, your baby will be swaddled in the softest natural fabrics, preferably those featuring gender-neutral designs and simple graphics. San Francisco designer Rachel Pearson has the number of all the progressive parents in the Bay Area, crafting clothing under her Speesees label that’s almost fiendishly cute and high-minded.

Pearson began her line with organic cotton onesies a few years back and kept expanding, to pants, t-shirts, hats, dresses, and bibs, even a few toys. Everything is colored with low-impact dyes and easy on the eye: uncluttered shapes, sophisticated colors, nothing cloying or tacky. Baby kimono onesies are easy to wrap and unwrap on a squirming infant in need of a change; baby yoga pants are loose enough to comfortably accommodate the cloth diapers many hipster parents prefer. This is the kind of clothing that you hang on to for baby #2 or #3, or reluctantly pass on to your friends, telling them “This was my favorite onesie.”

You can buy Speesees clothing at various San Francisco boutiques, like Ladybug Ladybug in Noe Valley, or at Rainbow Grocery and Whole Foods stores, but once you get addicted you’re going to need to visit the Speesees store, 2325 Third Street (at 20th Street), Suite 342, San Francisco. Call 415-552-5808 or visit speesees.com.

The cheap/cute Liz Lange Target line aside, maternity wear is expensive if you want anything at all stylish. It’s a little nervewracking to splash out and pay $200 for a skirt that you’ll drop like a hot rock after your nine months are over.

Your alternatives: the scanty selection of flowered tents at consignment and thrift stores, cheap schmattes from Ross, empire waist tops from the mommy shops. Or the discounted designer clothing available at Maternity Xchange.

Each month, the San Francisco Maternity Xchange is held in the Sports Basement store in the Presidio (by Crissy Field). Shoppers can buy quality used clothing from better labels (”Gap and up,” says the Xchange website); moms get to drop off their used maternity clothing and receive 40-50% of the selling price.

It’s a win-win for everyone. Stylish pieces are priced in the deeply discounted $30-$80 range, meaning that those who consign their clothing get a nice bit of cash when they’re sold. This is where you should look for that nice pair of black pants that’ll stand you in good stead until you deliver. Just don’t be depressed if you’re still in them three months after your kid is born.

The next Maternity Xchange sale is at the East Bay Baby Fair, 7/12, 11am-3pm, at the Veterans Memorial Building, 1345 Portland Avenue (at Ramona Avenue), Albany. The next San Francisco sale is Sat. & Sun, 7/19-20, 11am-4pm in the Presidio Sports Basement, 610 Mason Street (at Sutter Street), San Francisco. Call 510-814-1848 or visit maternityxchange.com.