Blooming marvellous: Shops selling fashionable clothes for mothers-to-be have sprung up all over the place, offering the hottest styles for the changing contours of a woman's shape.
Low-slung jeans, tunics and wrap dresses, the very stuff of current modish tastes are being made available in maternity versions. Well known brands such as Diane von Furstenberg, Juicy Couture and Theory are hopping on the bandwagon and including maternity lines in their collections, and the ultimate accolade is when non-pregnant women covet them as well. In Ireland, the long established Blooming, by MA International, keeps abreast of current trends and its summer collection includes boot-cut jeans for €65, jersey shrugs for €35 and white, pintucked lace tops for €50. The range is available in Mothercare outlets nationwide.
Get lucky
New brands of denim arrive here nearly every week. One that caught our attention recently is called Lucky, an American brand rooted in rock 'n' roll founded by two soi disant hippies with a passion for blue jeans called Gene Montesano and Barry Perlman who shipped their first order in 1990 and haven't looked back since. Their jeans have the shortest button-to-crotch measurements of a low-slung jean I've ever seen, and are known for their fit and quality, though good fit for one may not be the best fit for another. Nonetheless, Lucky jeans have a following among the gilded LA set, including Jessica Simpson, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Affleck and Sandra Bullock. The Lucky collection for autumn includes kimono printed tunics, embroidered shirts and a great selection of white "camp" shirts and tunics, as well as embroidered skirts. Find them in Willow, Ennis, Co Clare; Gasoline and Club Denim in Cork; The Closet, Wexford town; Moda, Mallow, Co Cork; Paul's, Kilkenny; BT2, Grafton Street, Dundrum Town Centre and Blanchardstown, Dublin; and Brown Thomas, Cork, Limerick and Dublin.