BABY BLUES
THE HIDEOUS TREND THAT MUST BE STOPPED
By FARRAH WEINSTEIN
June 19, 2007 -- I am not pregnant.
Will everyone please stop asking me?
It’s been enough to give me a complex, the whispers, the questions. At first, I thought I must be putting on pounds. Or because I recently married. Then, catching myself in the mirror one day, I realized the truth:
It’s these damn baby-doll dresses.
For the past season, the fashion industry has foisted poofy, flouncy dresses on the female population, and for the most part, we’ve bitten. I bought a pink baby-doll at Ooh La La in Long Beach, L.I., that was cotton with an adorable eyelet pattern on top. It was cute, comfortable, reasonably priced, but most of all - forgiving.
I kept eating. And eating. And eating. No jean zipper to worry about. No stomach to stick out. No problem. Wearing this dress, I ate about 2,000 calories more than I normally would. That’s the joy of a babydoll - it can hide a lot of flaws.
It also creates one major flaw: Every woman, no matter how in shape, looks like she’s smuggling pillows.
At the MuchMusic Awards over the weekend, Hilary Duff wore a beautiful billowy dress that made the waifish singer look like Tyler Perry in disguise. If a wee pop idol can’t look good in one of these, what chance do I have? I’m convinced the whole Nicole Richie “pregnancy” buzz is simply gusts of wind.
But it’s the fashion industry, dazzling us with cool colors, snazzy prints and get-out-of-here graphics, that is really pulling the silk over your eyes.
I beg of you, ladies. Don’t feed into it. It’s unflattering. And men don’t like it.
“It’s 100 percent a girl thing,” said Alison Brod, a 37-year-old pr firm owner, who is expecting her second child.
“I’ve been pregnant twice in 12 months. They’ve been in style both seasons. It’s all I wear. What’s funny is I used to yell at the girls in my office to dress up more. Now, I have 50 girls running around in baby-doll dresses. It’s so easy for them to throw on that they all wear them every day now.”
Her husband, on the other hand, is not a fan.
“Most girls look fatter in them,” he said. “Guys do not like baby doll dresses.”
Michaelangelo L’Acqua, a doorman at Dune nightclub in South Hampton, says the baby-doll trend is “huge” right now but if a girl wants to get in the door, she’s got to have the right body to wear it.
“It all depends how a woman carries herself,” he said. “If they’re short and squatty, it usually doesn’t work for them. But when a girl is around 5-foot-9, it’s a very sexy look. When you look all the way up the legs, it is hot.”
Michaelangelo also misses checking out all proportions of a woman’s frame.
“I like ass,” he says. “I like all types of asses and a pair of jeans that really contours to it. I’m not going to hate on baby-dolls, but nothing beats a good ass.”
The trend is not dying, either. Designers like Nanette Lepore, Cynthia Rowley, Tibi and Juicy Couture all carry the baby-doll dress. Shoshanna, Jill Stuart and Alice & Olivia are already working on babydolls for next season.
“Everybody wants the baby-doll,” says Jeff Goldstein, owner of Blue & Cream boutique in South Hampton. “I think it’s sort of an expression of the tone in the air. It’s not as serious, sexy and sultry. You can dress it up, or wear it with wedges or high heels. People in the Hamptons are totally embracing that freedom.”
Still, he would rather see women want something “revealing.”
“But girls are immature, and they wear these things because people tell them to do.”
Alright, then. I’ll tell you what to do - hang up the poofy and buy some shorts. Get a belt. Anything to stop New York from looking like a walking collection of Peeps.
As an example, I returned one of my baby-doll dresses to Zara, refusing to be conned by the fashion industry and knowing I would never wear it, even though it was adorable. At the register, a woman next to me asked if she could buy it because there were none left on the floor.
Sure, I smiled and handed her the dress to look at.
She was pregnant. It seemed only fair.
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