Back to the stereotypes for babies clothes- sigh.

[evenhope]

I went looking for something for a colleague going on maternity leave, and I'm totally unimpressed with the range of baby clothes on the high street. Everything is either white, blue or pink. Clothes for slightly older babies are no better- brown and blue for boys and more yucky pink for girls.

Is it customer demand that there is no variety? When i had my older kids 20 years ago there was at least a selection of more neutral colours. I hate the stereotyping that comes from head to toe pink/ blue.

I KNOW. Have been bothered by this since DD was born. People still mistake her for a boy because faced with the choice of yukky pink or blue I'll pick blue out of bloody mindedness these days! Hence DD has blue shoes, Leappad etc

I dressed dd1 in pale blue a lot, 'cos it suited her. She was constantly mistaken for a boy, but who cares! That was just 3 years ago, and there were purples in GAP....and more neutrals available generally. I agree, right now seem to be nothing but pinks and blues around.

Mind you, have been given a ton of second hand stuff for Bump, and as I know she's a she, nearly ALL of it is pink... HOpe it suits her.

It's also really annoying when you've decided not to find out and want to pick up a few bits in advance.

I thought newborn stuff would be mostly in neutrals but there's way more that is gender specific (yes I know I should just buy the babygrows with pirates on them and grin and bear the little boy comments if bump turns out to be a girl!).

Even more annoying was finding some quite nice stuff in John Lewis but they were always bloody sold out of the neutrals in the small sizes so people are obviously still buying them!

Think the theory of more people finding out the sex may well be behind it, at least partially. We only get a 12wk scan here so didn't have the option (and I'm not bothered either way).

I'd agree with the H&M recommendation - DS had a gorgeous little black velour suit, with a black & white striped t shirt (Have to say my MIL hated it, which was probably why I bought it in the first place...)

la redoute have lots of nice orange and red baby and children stuff and also vertbaudet. I also saw a deep purple snowsuit on one of them. I hate the way everything is pastel. I swore I would never put my son is pale blue after being given so much of the colout. But now hes older its quite a relief from all the navy and khaki.

Although Mothercare is practically as bad on this as all the others, they do have some nice red stuff in the boys' section. Generally the boys' clothes seem to be more varied so you can probably find better things there.

It bugs me, too. We used to wear all sorts of colours when we were little in the Seventies...

Notquitecockney...thanks! Those Du Pareil au Meme clothes are lovely, and not expensive either.

(not quite sure why they decided to call one of the ranges 'Arsenic' though...)