Maternity Workwear: The Eight-Piece Office Capsule

Eight maternity pieces will dress you for work through an entire pregnancy: two pairs of tailored trousers, dark jeans, two tops, a dress, a blazer and a knit. Here's our guide on how to style your bump and keep you looking professional during pregnancy.

Work is the hardest wardrobe to solve

Weekend clothes forgive almost everything. Leggings and a longline top will carry you from twelve weeks to forty without complaint. Work is different.

Five days a week you must adhere to challenging dress codes, whilst working through changes to your body shape. Depending on how often you go to the office, it also may be the wardrobe most worth your investment. Five days a week across six months is well over a hundred wears from a handful of pieces. If you are going to buy maternity clothes properly anywhere, now is the time.

Buy the bottom half first

Waistbands have no give, and by the time you are quietly undoing the button at your desk you have left it a few weeks too long. For this reason you should look for trousers first.

Two pairs of tailored maternity trousers will do more for your working week than anything else. Over-bump panels give more support through the second half of pregnancy; under-bump styles sit low on the hip and keep a lower profile in the early weeks, before you have told anyone.

The eight pieces we recommend

The list below gives you a fully fledged maternity work wardrobe, though you won't need everything from week 12. Buy as and when you need:

1. Two pairs of tailored trousers. One in navy or black, one in a lighter neutral. Between them they cover every day of the week. Our Eda maternity pants are perfect for comfortable, under the bump trousers.
2. One pair of dark maternity jeans. For Fridays, and for any office where denim passes. Dark, clean and unfaded reads as smart in a way that mid-blue does not. Our maternity jeans come in washed black, perfect for a smart casual look.
3. Two tops that skim rather than cling. Length matters — anything that rides up at the front by week thirty is dead weight. Our essentials maternity scoop top has you covered, in a range of colours.
4. One work dress. The most useful item in the list. One good dress solves a morning where nothing else appeals, and takes you from a meeting to dinner without a change. Kelsey is a customer favourite, as featured in The Telegraph online.
5. One maternity blazer. Worn open, it does more than any other garment to keep an outfit looking ready for client meetings or coffee catchups. The Lisbeth blazer is designed for exactly this.
6. One longline knit. Generously cut, so it still works at thirty-eight weeks rather than becoming a size-too-small memory of the second trimester.

The wardrobe shifts every month, and that is normal

There are three phases to maternity office dressing:

Weeks 12–20: swap the bottom half

Trousers and jeans change over; your own tops and jackets still work. This is the cheapest phase, and the one most people over-buy for. If you are not sure whether you are there yet, we have written a guide on when to start wearing maternity clothes.

Weeks 20–30: the easy stretch

The capsule is doing its job and you have stopped thinking about it. Most women feel most like themselves here — the bump is unmistakable, the clothes fit properly, and getting dressed takes four minutes again.

Weeks 30–40: let comfort win

Tailoring gets harder and the rotation narrows to whatever feels best. Softer trousers and a maternity work dress tend to take over from anything structured, and there is no reason to resist it.

The office is always the wrong temperature

Pregnancy tends to run warm. Air conditioning does not negotiate, and neither does a meeting room with eight people in it. Layering is your best friend in navigating changing climates.

• Anything you can take off without dismantling the outfit. A blazer or open knit over a top that stands up on its own. Avoid anything that only looks finished fully buttoned.
• Breathable fabrics over synthetics. TENCEL, viscose and cotton move air and hold their shape through a full day of sitting. Polyester does neither.
• Sleeves you can push up. A small thing that matters more than it should by the third trimester.

Frequently asked questions

The takeaway

Work is the wardrobe that gets the hardest use and the least sympathy, and it is the one worth solving properly. Eight pieces, bought in stages, starting from the waist down. Expect it to shift about three times across the nine months, and let it.