The author’s daughter, Lulu.
Photo: Jason Diamond.
During the blur of the newborn phase, my wife, Emily, walked into the living room and told me that she had figured out our baby’s personal style. Her look, Emily joked, was “Lisa Says Goo Goo Gah Gah,” a play on quintessential fruit-girl outfitter Lisa Bühler’s colorful eclecticism. We also have called it “maximalist clown,” thanks to the Misha & Puff ruffled-collar onesies she wore from months 3 through 12. Some of the nannies in our neighborhood have referred to it as “fashion girlie.” It has been hard, truthfully, as a lot of the clothing out there for our tiniest offspring falls into a landscape of muted sameness. But there are no sad beige-covered babies in our house.
I spent the nine months Emily was pregnant reading as much as I could about parenting, gravitating toward anything that emphasized how to raise a happy kid. I probably don’t have to tell you that it’s pretty bleak out there, and having spent over 20 years in therapy trying to cope with my own rough childhood, my only hope was to do everything we could to emphasize happiness, joy, and beauty. Even in her closet.
Thankfully, we gave birth to a natural. Some days I think my daughter is running for office. She smiles and waves at every single person she sees. She’s a little curly-haired, green-eyed ball of dopamine with four teeth. Fourteen months in and I’ve already gotten used to relative strangers knowing her name because they met at the park (a sanitation worker) or the library (a security guard) or through their kindergartner (a fellow dad). On top of it all, our daughter’s name is Lulu. We didn’t know her gender before she was born and had a short list of names in-hand at the hospital. The second the nurses handed her over to us, wailing and goopy, one of us said, “She’s definitely a Lulu.” While we weren’t thinking beyond keeping our firstborn alive in those early days, I’ve learned since that naming a baby tends to provide a little foreshadowing, if not full-on confirmation bias. Her silly, mischievous personality suits her name, but how much of that is because it’s our idea of how a now-toddler should act? Is she an extrovert named Lulu because she’s an extrovert or because we are projecting those qualities, my own chattiness with strangers, onto her?
I turn this over and over in my mind — but then she is charming every busboy at a snobby Upper East Side bistro and it’s hard to deny that the little person at my table is, in fact, a joyful little clown. That the pattern-maxing outfit she’s wearing, in four shades of red and styled by my wife, is an expression of her personality, which is distinct from my own.
I think the fact that Emily and I are having fun is good for Lulu. Part of the fun is making sure she’s always in something colorful, but it’s also about not placing too many boundaries on her look. We’re not trying to outfit her; it isn’t about dressing our toddler so she becomes a street-style icon or anything like that. She’s got cute stuff from brands like Mmoody Kids, Mini Rodini, and Bobo Choses, but we’re just as likely to put her in a tiny Barney Greengrass shirt and a pair of vintage purple bloomers. Secondhand has been a boon — hand-embroidered camp shirts from the 1970s, early-’90s Polo jeans, kaleidoscopic vintage Oilily — and the sustainability of used clothing eases the pain of how wasteful it feels to buy new for a rapidly growing kid. Susan Alexandra sent her a “Daddy’s Little Matzoh Ball” onesie, which we paired with fuchsia lamé leggings that looked straight out of Ziggy Stardust’s closet but were actually hand-me-downs from our friend Helen’s equally stylish daughter, Anya.
We didn’t buy baby clothing before Lulu came. Emily is superstitious, so even getting the crib together waited until the last second. That doesn’t mean I didn’t buy any clothes for our baby — I just hid them and didn’t tell Emily. I’m not quite sure how baby style ended up in what I can only describe as “Post-Gender Dystopian Oliver Twist Meets Streetwear”: earthy neutrals at Baby Zara, earthy neutrals at Baby H&M, and yet more earthy neutrals at upscale Scandi brand Konges Sløjd. But there were a couple of things, very specific purchases, I pulled the trigger on because the sales were too good to pass up, including a Ralph Lauren Polo Bear sweater. As a lifelong Polo wearer, I reasoned that Ralph’s bear was a rite of passage for our kid. When Lulu was born and I showed it to Emily, she said it was cute but that we’d probably only end up putting it on her two or three times before she outgrew it. When we finally put it on her, it didn’t really feel like something she’d wear: The cut was too preppy and the navy was too somber. Classic prep is more my thing; if Lulu wants to get into it when she’s older, that’s fine. (I already have things like old Polos and a Barbour jacket I had rewaxed, fixed up, and embroidered with her name waiting for when she’s ready.)
I think, and from all I’ve been told believe, Emily and I are doing a pretty good job with Lulu so far. I don’t think I’ve done anything that will cause her to spend thousands of dollars talking to a shrink about what a bad father I was. But I will admit that there have been times when I wonder if I’m placing too much emphasis on teaching Lulu about clothes. (I should say that, as somebody who is terminally online, Lulu’s style is for IRL. If I post pics of her on Instagram, her face is always blurred out by a bagel emoji; we’re proud of our cute kid, but we’re trying to let her have the choice about having her face online.) Emily and I have talked about how important it is that we instill an appreciation for personal style in her the same way we want her to appreciate books, art, and food. But style is one of those tricky things to talk about when a million more pressing things are happening every moment of each day.
Hearing other parents say how happy dressing their kid makes them helps me feel a little better. I’d known Carly Boonparn, co-owner of Parachute in Greenpoint, for years from the Brooklyn music scene, back when we used to get home from places like Glasslands or Enid’s around the same time Lulu now wakes up in the morning. Today, we’re both parents, and I reconnected with her because she used her years of experience working at Beacon’s Closet in Williamsburg to open her own place that sells stylish vintage clothes — to babies and children, not indie-rock-band guitarists and New School freshmen. Boonparn has always loved working with clothes, and after becoming a mom, she got more interested in kids’ fashion. Her daughter is 9 now, “but it has always made me happy how colorful kids’ clothes are, especially because I always wear black,” she says. Liana Satenstein, former Vogue writer and host of the popular Neverworns series, tells me that when her son Sy was born this past February, just trying to navigate parenthood was enough. “At first I was thinking about just dressing my child in schmattas,” she says in a way that’s half-joke and half-truth, before admitting, “Now I’m SSENSE kids-pilled and want to morph him into an Eckhaus Latta bebe.”
I’d be lying if I didn’t say that dressing up Lulu brings me immense joy. Not long before we got pregnant, I read a quote from the writer and editor Sadie Stein that really stuck with me: “What people don’t say enough about having a small child is how fun it is.” That idea has been my guiding philosophy since I read it, and I’ve made sure that starting when she first wakes up, around 6 a.m. every morning, we’re both having fun. We have breakfast, listen to music, play with her toys, I’ll read to her for a bit and then Emily will wake up and help us pick out an outfit. Having those first few hours tapping into Lulu’s childhood wonderment is enough to carry me through my own first few hours of daily adult drudgery, but Lulu’s style has helped me connect with other parents — something I was honestly a little apprehensive to do before becoming a parent. I used to be uncomfortable with the idea of making “friends” with other adults because we both have kids, but I’ve found that kids’ style is a good way to find out about other people. Like the dad at the playground the other day who told me about how his older daughter has started wearing his collection of vintage punk and metal shirts.
When Lulu gets old enough to start dressing herself, I like to think we’ll hand the reins over to her; we just want her to grow up conscious of her choices the same way she would the food she eats or the media she digests. Part of that is teaching her that style isn’t about draping yourself in the most expensive designer logos, nor is it about trying to save a buck by buying fast fashion. But it’s also telling her that when the world is already filled with ugly, bland, and uninspired, all you can do is be yourself, say hello to your neighbors, and stay, above all, happy.
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