Bump Brooklyn is carrying En Sainte Maternity. It’s official–Parisian maternity chic is now available stateside.
I was introduced to En Sainte Maternity in Spring 2011 at a maternity and chiildren’s wear trade show in New York City. I introduced myself to Caroline, the founder, and she was lovely and a mother of two and just so fabulously French. En Sainte did not yet have any US buyers, but I was newly pregnant at the time, so I devoted a good bit of effort to trying to order one of En Sainte’s Fall 2011 pieces directly from Europe. Unfortunately, my interactions with the few French maternity boutiques that carried En Sainte were so unfortunate, I chose not to recommend the line to all of you. Who wants to know about an incredible new maternity line that you can’t actually buy? Fashion is clearly a French strength, but neither customer service, nor the convenience of online shopping are high on French retailers’ list of priorities. (You’ll notice En Sainte hasn’t updated its own website in a year, you can view many of its current pieces here).
But with Bump Brooklyn now carrying the line, I feel at liberty to recommend what is a truly exquisite collection of maternitywear. En Sainte is one of those overtly French designer brands that you read about and that you might see on an actual French woman and say, “I absolutely love that, but I could never pull it off.” But Bump has smartly chosen to start off with only the line’s most basic and wearable pieces, like the Fifi Milano Dress or the Berlingo Wool Tunic. These pieces are made from high-end materials, but more importantly, each piece has a little bit of French flair, like the puffed sleeves on this Milano Dress or the print on this Poppy Cotton Tunic.
Not surprisingly, this line runs incredibly small. When I finally did receive an En Sainte dress last year, it was far too small (returning a dress to a French boutique is, by the way, infinitely worse than trying to buy it). With En Sainte, order one size up, or two if you are in your third trimester.
