almost makes perfect

i get asked constantly about where i buy arlo’s clothes, i know it can be really hard to find cute boy clothes when it feels like alllll the cutest clothes are always for girls. its definitely more of a challenge to dress a boy well, but a fun challenge! i have a little bit of an addiction to shopping for arlo, way way more than myself these days, so i kind of always am on the lookout for cute things for him and that might help. i also always have a cart full of clothes on the h&m and zara apps, and if i really love something, i’ve learned to pull the trigger asap.

it’s funny because we kept arlo mostly naked for the first few months of his life and just always had him wrapped in swaddles (i’m not sure why, i think we were just lazy and didn’t want to keep changing him over and over since he was having like 10 blowouts a day lol), so when it came time to start dressing him in clothes, i was kind of lost. it took me a little while to kind of figure out what looked best on him and to establish “his style” (lol again). and now i am pleased to say he is a style icon, mostly for his own dad who has been inspired to wear more patterns himself.

i’m not sure how you would describe arlos look, but i always think of him as like a modern 90s skater — others might call him a miniature hipster. they’d be wrong probably. basically he just looks cool. our rule of thumb is — we try not to dress him like a baby. whenever i’d dress him in onesies (or even put the occasional bonnet on him for a laugh), he didn’t look like himself really, so i eventually decided to just dress him like a miniature guy instead. except not an old man! a baby dressed in a suit or vest or bowtie or anything like that wigs me out. it reminds me of a ventriloquist’s dummy and i don’t like it one bit.

a piece of advice is to buy multiple sizes if you are truly in love with an item, so that you won’t have to say goodbye to your favorite things. i also bought things in all different sizes when he was in the womb/a tiny newborn so i’d have a variety of sizes for him to grow into. i still buy things that are too big for him because it feels somehow gentler to accept his constant growing. we’re unlucky that he is so big and didn’t get to wear a good amount of the smaller sizes, but we’re lucky that he gets to wear toddler sizes and i feel like there is more to choose from sometimes.

in terms of high/low, i do own some expensive items — some i’ve splurged on, some i got as generous gifts or hand me downs. when i do decide to splurge, i always get it in a size that has a big range like 12-18 versus 9-12 so that he has room to grow. i usually can’t justify an expensive romper but i know he’ll get more wear out of a graphic tee i love.

so i put together a bunch of arlo outfits, and unfortunately a lot of these specific items are out of stock, but i still put them together to give you examples of how he dresses and where things came from! hope this helps!

Read More