Have you heard of
Le Tote? It's a completely customizable rotating wardrobe sent directly to your doorstep! Basically here's
how it works. For
one flat rate ($69 a month gets you access to both maternity and non-maternity items), you sign up and complete a bit of a style profile and pick items you like. After that your stylist will compose a "tote" for you which comes to you as a box with 5 items inside. Before the box is sent out however you are able to customize any of the items you want by swapping them out or changing the size.
When you are done wearing the items, toss them back UNWASHED in the pre-paid shipping bag and send it back. You can get as many totes as you can cycle through in a month for just your monthly fee. No limit!
There is no bigger time in a woman's life where you feel like you're throwing money out the window on clothing than when you are pregnant. You know these clothes have an expiration date and usually they aren't your favorites.
So what's a girl to do? Try out
Le Tote Maternity. I really can't recommend it enough. It's the perfect time to experiment with a borrowed wardrobe. There really is no better way to get size and season specific maternity clothes than this. It's like having a best friend with the exact same size and style as you with and huge selection of her maternity clothes at your disposal, but that's next to impossible to come across.
My Top 6 Le Tote Maternity Ordering Tips
1. Start your subscription three months before your due date. In my opinion, that's when my body is changing the most. The first 5 months you can probably get away wearing a lot of the stuff you already own like flowy dresses, tees, sweaters or stretchy pants, but those last few months you feel like you are getting bigger by the day. Let's face it, you won't be wearing those clothes post-baby, but the early ones you will, so spend your money there because they will double as postpartum clothes. Take advantage of Le Tote's many actual maternity options.
2. Find a brand you like. I found that the brand Summer & Sage made the softest stretchy long dresses so naturally I ordered one in each tote. You can find a brand and fabric that caters to your body by ordering a variety of brands in your first tote to better guide your decisions in the next round.
3. Are you a bag or jewelry person? After you've picked your three clothing items you get two accessories which can be jewelry, scarves or bags. Determine what you like what you will actually wear and choose accordingly. I ordered jewelry in my first tote and it just sat there really, so I decided bags and scarves were more my thing so I picked those as my accessories the next time.
4. Customize your tote! I loved that within hours after my tote was scanned in at the post office an email AND text came to me with the stylists' new picks for me. I ALWAYS changed them. I mean, I'm a personal shopper, I am good at knowing what I like, so I always made sure that in that 48hr window they give you to change your selections, I did!
5. Don't just pick what's pretty. By all means try something new that maybe you wouldn't have if you were buying these items on you own, but make sure you take into account your job, lifestyle and the weather. I remember in one of my first totes picking pretty dresses that would have worked great if I was still teaching, but I'm not. I don't have to go into a professional setting, so no matter how cute the dress was, it didn't work for my lifestyle. I quickly got wise and stuck to the midi length comfortable dresses.
6. Think of what you already own and choose accordingly. I know well enough that I have tons of long sweater cardigans that work great over dresses so ordering jackets wasn't really a smart choice for me. Maybe for you, you're coming into the colder months with a lack of jackets and need some so that will make sense for you. Maybe you already invested in some really comfy maternity pants so you want to focus on picking tops that mix them up. Just think about what you already have in your closet and how it will work with your borrowed items.
See how I've styled some of my favorite Le Tote pieces in these last 3 months below.
