On dressing a girl

If you have a girl, you will find that many of her clothes are wild and crazy prints. Recently, Mom101 wrote about seeing Thalia’s crazy pants and knowing that it meant they had reached the bottom of the barrel and it was laundry day. I’m actually finding that we have more crazy pants than sane pants.

My husband, who does not like to feel inept at such things, has expressed concern about the difficulty of dressing a girl when he is faced with drawers full of printed clothes. He would like to be able to compose a charming ensemble of mixed prints, but does not want it to go awry and then be accused of incompetent baby girl-dressing.

I have a tip for him, and I’ll share it with you.

Domino magazine had a piece about creating a unique look for your bedding by mixing prints. The key, they coach us, is to choose prints that have a common background color. You can use a floral print with a striped print if they are both on cream, or white, or heather grey. Or if the dominant colors are exactly the same. (Magenta and fuschia might not work.)

I think the same advice can be applied to mixing prints on baby clothes. This probably goes for boys, too, but perhaps it’s less charming to mix checks with stripes than it is to mix hearts with florals.

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Whitney

RookieMoms.com co-founder Whitney lives with her husband, son, and daughter in the San Francisco Bay Area where she writes about parenting, crafts, and activities that moms can do with babies in tow. She and Heather also publish 510Families.com, a site for East Bay parents.