maternity clothing: Any good shops near London

[Jzee]

I'm rapidy expanding and am unable to find any maternity clothing which is nice, reasonably priced and doesn't make me look like a sack of potatoes! Can anyone suggest shops within London or on-line?

Congratulations!! Apparently 'Bumpstart' is very good, I heard about them too late unfortunately. It is a little shop in Revelstoke Road (I think) in Wimbledon Park. Blooming Marvellous has a shop in Fulham or you could use their website if you prefer (but be warned, I found their jeans apalling quality.) Next in Bluewater also do maternity wear.

Next also do maternity on line. Additional on line ones include:
www.verbaudet.co.uk (also via catalogue)
www.laredoute.co.uk (also via catalogue)

I totally agree with CP about Blooming Marvellous - v. expensive and not worth the money.
M&S used to do maternity wear and dorothy perkins definitely still does.

Congrats Jzee. Wd echo the above about Blooming Awful, oops. I had a pair of jeans for my last pregnancy from Formes. They were expensive, far more than I wd ever pay in 'normal life' for clothes (£55 I think) but they were really fantastic and I wore them pretty much every singlke day and have lent them to three pg friends since. Formes have a few branches and possibly mail order. One in Covent Gdn, one in S Kensington, one Bond St or nearby. Good luck!

Maturnus in Dulwich Village is very good. I like Formes though it is expensive. I bought one floaty, sleevless and low necked (but still quite professional) little black dress which saw me through an entire summer from May to September and I wore it at least 3 times a week so it worth the £60 or so it cost - and I got lots of compliments while wearing it. If I wasn't wearing that I was wearing bias cut, crepe Ghost dresses and skirts which fitted me before (when I was size 12) during (massive) and after (size 14 on a good day ) Lovely clothes though, and worth the vast expense if they are your thing when not pg. When I was in hospital with PP a pregnant consultant asked me where I got my maternity clothes!

Jzee

I'd echo the formes comments I spent a fortune there when I was pregnant with both ds and dd. Expensive but worth it - especially balck evening wear - if you have a need for it.

I am now on my second pregnancy (first one a summer preg, this time round a winter one) and can wholeheartedly recommend Formes. Be warned that they are very expensive but the quality and styles are excellent. Have worn a pair of their jeans the whole way thru this pregnancy (now at 34wks) and they have had lots of compliments and comments. Ditto their black trousers. Maybe just buy one pair of jeans from them and one pair of black trousers then augment your maternity wardrobe with cheaper chainstore stuff? One word of warning - if you really do want stuff to last the whole pregnancy, it's best to go for the horrible whole-gusset fronts.

Of the cheaper places, I would say Dorothy Perkins and Hennes are both good for basics such as white t-shirts/inoffensive black tops, although they also have lots of dodgy stuff - you just have to rifle through the racks.

Blooming Marvellous jeans are terrible, in my opinion. Someone at work recommended them and I phoned up and ordered some 'bootleg' jeans from there. Was eagerly awaiting their arrival and when they arrived rushed upstairs to put them on and was gutted to realize that they were skin-tight drainpipes of the type Olivia Newton John wore in Grease. Maybe they'd look great on Sarah Jessica Parker (and if you teamed them with a pair of sexy stilettoes) but I just looked absolutely ludicrous.

Some people have recommended Next Directory but when I ordered it the jeans were all very Nancy dell'Olio with appliqued zips and flowers all up the legs...not my scene!

Happy shopping!

I am now on my second pregnancy (first one a summer preg, this time round a winter one) and can wholeheartedly recommend Formes. Be warned that they are very expensive but the quality and styles are excellent. Have worn a pair of their jeans the whole way thru this pregnancy (now at 34wks) and they have had lots of compliments and comments. Ditto their black trousers. Maybe just buy one pair of jeans from them and one pair of black trousers then augment your maternity wardrobe with cheaper chainstore stuff? One word of warning - if you really do want stuff to last the whole pregnancy, it's best to go for the horrible whole-gusset fronts.

Of the cheaper places, I would say Dorothy Perkins and Hennes are both good for basics such as white t-shirts/inoffensive black tops, although they also have lots of dodgy stuff - you just have to rifle through the racks.

Blooming Marvellous jeans are terrible, in my opinion. Someone at work recommended them and I phoned up and ordered some 'bootleg' jeans from there. Was eagerly awaiting their arrival and when they arrived rushed upstairs to put them on and was gutted to realize that they were skin-tight drainpipes of the type Olivia Newton John wore in Grease. Maybe they'd look great on Sarah Jessica Parker (and if you teamed them with a pair of sexy stilettoes) but I just looked absolutely ludicrous.

Some people have recommended Next Directory but when I ordered it the jeans were all very Nancy dell'Olio with appliqued zips and flowers all up the legs...not my scene!

Happy shopping!

Thanks for the tips and I shall have to try some of the suggested places. I did try next, but their jeans were hideous - elephant pants! I'm looking forward to the day when I can get my favourite old levis on, but at the rate I'm eating that's a long way off!

You could try Maternity Exchange

Jzee - echo the comments on Formes and there's one in Hampstead if that's good for you. I found Dotty P and Hennes pretty good. BOught a fab pair of jeans from Hennes that were about £20 and I wore non-stop during pregnancy and after. Ditto a black stretchy dress that I wore doa black tie do and cost about £20 as well. JoJo Maman Bebe have some ok stuff and there's a shop in North London (between Golders Green adn Finchley) though they do mail order

Ditto about the Hennes jeans - wore them every day practically (and for some time after the birth...).
What you might also consider is something I've seen on the www.grobag.co.uk site, called a Bellybelt which I am thinking about for for this, my 2nd pregnancy. They cost £12.99, slot into the fly part of your normal trousers just widening the waist a bit and it says you can wear all your old trousers / skirts for much longer. Anyone else tried it?
My mother told me that you can just use a thick elastic band looped from the waist button of your normal trousers to the button hole and cover it with a long T shirt. That's what she did in the 60s anyway, when maternity dresses were huge, frumpy and with massive collars.

If I remember rightly they were like that in the 80s as well. My horror of maternity clothes stemmed from images of the Princess of Wales in a green bag with a white frilly colour.

One good thing about Blooming Marvellous is that they do trousers in a short leg fitting.
(Agree about the quality/cost and have been reduced to tears a couple of times by the woman who manages the Fulham shop though)

Found blooming marvellous a totally rip-off for maternity wear, although have bought other bits happily from them.

Quite pleased with jojomaman trackies that don't fall down and look OK and were reduced. Mailorder service from them leaves a lot to be desired.

Blooming Marvellous - agree jeans are blooming awful. They have a stretchy panel, then where the denim starts it really cuts into your bump (mind you, mine was quite big). But I really like a little black dress I bought from there last pregnancy - wore it all the time.

I found John Lewis quite good - got some really good trousers for work and a couple of good tops.

Hennes have a great range of maternity wear, that is really cheap, not brilliantly made but all the latest styles. Lot's of great stretchy tops that I wore afterwards and some smart work clothes too. Good for dresses in the summer too.

If you have any friends going out to the states get them to bring you back Gap maternity wear, there are lovely cotton basics that will get you through - I chose stuff online and then sent my friend in with a shopping list!

I also bought some of the drainpipe Blooming Marvellous jeans - unfortunately dp kindly compared me to Pauline Calf rather than Olivia Newton John so needless to say they went back. Like Cha's mum I mainly wore my old trousers with a hair bobble round the top button to hold them together - bit low maintenance but it worked quite well. Once I got too big for this I also found Hennes the best high street shop as their trousers were cheap and didn't have great big tummy panels.

I've got a pair of the famous Hennes jeans, they don't have a stretchy front panel so you do look a bit like Humpty Dumpty if you don't cover the top. However at 8 months mine (size 10) are just too tight now - sob - so be warned they prob. won't last you the whole way through unless you get a size too big which won't look as good earlier on. Mind you they did only cost about £20 so I can't complain too much.

Also I was lent a bellybelt but it stuck out a lot underneath clothes so made me look a bit lumpy even in the days when I wasn't!

I've got a pair of the famous Hennes jeans, they don't have a stretchy front panel so you do look a bit like Humpty Dumpty if you don't cover the top. However at 8 months mine (size 10) are just too tight now - sob - so be warned they prob. won't last you the whole way through unless you get a size too big which won't look as good earlier on. Mind you they did only cost about £20 so I can't complain too much.

Also I was lent a bellybelt but it stuck out a lot underneath clothes so made me look a bit lumpy even in the days when I wasn't!

Am I the only one to like Blooming Marvellous clothes? I even happily wore their jeans (not drainpipe though) throughout my pregnancy, although preferred their chinos. I also loved Formes and found Hennes good for t-shirts, but awful quality for anything else. Jojomamanbebe was so-so - their sizes came up small and delivery very bad. What amazed me was how few clothes fitted me in the last couple of weeks of pregnancy - I thought they were meant to last throughout. I was reduced to joggers by the end - thank goodness I had left work.

God bluebear - I know what you mean! That woman in the Fulham Blooming Marvellous is a dragon. The way to deal with her I found is to smile a lot, she eventually does back (or is it snarling?).
I worked just round the corner from the shop when I was pg with my first and went in there at 4 months or so to have a look at what to expect. I felt like killing myself. Frumpy frumpy frumpy. No matter HOW MANY TIMES I went in there looking for something remotely decent, all I ever came out with was a nursing bra. They estimated my size to be a 38DD which I was floored by (Pamela Anderson or what?) and guess what? it was always too big, even in the first few weeks. Hey ho. Did have a moment of glorious expectation though.

Has anyone tried the Blooming Marvellous under-bump jeans successfully? I bought a pair on Saturday - seemed fine in the shop, but as soon as I wore them they slipped down and I got builder's bum. Not quite the trendy effect I was hoping for. Do they actually work or are they a con?

I've found Mothercare good for clothes - bit boring but they are cheap (esp the underwear) and quite well made.

ringing out the praises of John Lewis again, I bought some nice stuff there.

If you don't mind 2nd hand, go to www.nctpregnancyandbabycare.com and click on News for details of nearly new sales up and down the country all usually held Mar/April and Sept/Oct.

Just discovered a small shop I didn't know about - has mainly quite posh stuff suitable for work / going out / weddings, etc, prices are mid-range I'd say, but you'd only buy "special" things there, I think. I just bought a very smart pair of black boot-leg trousers for work - cost £69. Also a couple of maternity bras, which are nicer than most I have seen.

The shop is Night Owls, 78 Fulham Road. It looks like a nightwear/underwear shop from the outside, but there is a maternity section upstairs.