But I think there should always be a little room in life for things that make an ordinary day better.
If we are talking strictly about need, most of us could open a drawer right now and find enough T-shirts to successfully make it through the week. Maybe several weeks. There is probably one in there from an event you barely remember attending and another that has somehow survived fifteen years despite never actually being chosen.
So no, I don't think we need another T-shirt.
But I also don't think everything we bring into our lives has to pass a test of absolute necessity.
Sometimes you see a shirt and it makes you smile. The words are exactly something you would say. The illustration reminds you of a place you love, a hobby you have become slightly too invested in, or a version of yourself your friends know very well. You put it on with jeans and suddenly you look good without having done very much at all.
That's different.
And I think there should always be a little room in life for that.
A Little Pleasure in an Extremely Full Day
Most moms I know are moving constantly. We go from one part of ourselves to another all day long: mother, professional, driver, organizer, friend, wife, daughter, problem-solver, person attempting to remember what everyone needs and where everyone is supposed to be.
Somewhere in there, we're also just ourselves.
The woman who loves Italy. The one who plans the trips. The one who is weirdly serious about Mahjong. The one who will absolutely stop at a flea market because she saw ceramics from the road. The tennis player. The restaurant finder. The friend who orders oysters. The woman who considers a long lunch a perfectly legitimate use of an afternoon.
Those parts of us matter too.
I like clothes that remember them.
There is something fun about opening your closet and choosing what version of yourself gets to come along today. Maybe it's travel. Maybe it's tennis. Maybe it's pasta. Maybe it's a T-shirt that says something so specifically you that putting it on feels like an inside joke.
Of course, within approximately twelve minutes of putting it on, you may spill coffee directly down the front.
This is life.
The important thing is that for those twelve minutes, you looked fantastic.
The Easiest Outfit I Know
There is also the practical side of this, because I have no interest in pretending women with very full lives have forty-five minutes every morning to contemplate an outfit.
A really good T-shirt makes style easy.
Great jeans, T-shirt, sneakers. Done. Put it under a blazer and suddenly you look like you planned something. Add sunglasses and you can create the general impression that everything is under control even when you have already driven away from the house once and returned because you forgot the thing you specifically told yourself not to forget.
And unlike clothes that require you to behave carefully, a T-shirt understands the assignment.
It understands coffee.
It understands lunch.
It understands that you said you didn't want dessert and then somebody ordered ice cream, so naturally you had to taste it—with your whole heart.
It understands that at some point during the day you may look down and discover a small stain with absolutely no recollection of how it got there.
A good T-shirt isn't waiting for a perfect life. It comes along for the actual one.
That's one reason I love them.
You can wear one for the school run, work, errands, lunch with a friend and still be wearing it when somebody texts at five asking if you want to meet for a drink. You don't need an entirely new wardrobe for every version of your day. Sometimes you just need a great shirt, good jeans and the willingness to pretend the coffee stain is recent.
Clothes Can Change a Mood
There are days when everything is simply a little off.
Nothing catastrophic has happened. It's just one of those mornings when you are already behind, somebody needs something, your hair has entered negotiations, your coffee went cold because apparently drinking it while hot was too ambitious, and the day seems to have developed a personality you don't particularly enjoy.
Obviously, a T-shirt isn't going to solve that.
But I have never understood why something has to solve your problems in order to be worthwhile.
A great coffee doesn't solve them either—although I remain willing to keep testing this theory.
Neither does a song you love in the car, fresh flowers on the kitchen table, an unnecessary pastry, a message from a friend, twenty minutes in the sun or booking a restaurant for Friday night.
They simply add a little pleasure to the day.
I think clothes can do that too.
Sometimes you put on something you love and you stand a little differently. Maybe the color looks particularly good. Maybe the words make you laugh. Maybe it reminds you that outside today's list of things that need to get done, there are trips to take, friends to see, tables to sit around and things you are interested in.
Maybe another woman sees your shirt at the coffee shop and laughs because she gets it too.
And suddenly you have that tiny moment between two strangers that says, Yes. You are my people.
It's small.
But small pleasures count.
Maybe That's the Point
When I started thinking about what I wanted Moms Social to be, I kept coming back to the same woman.
She's a mom, of course. But that's nowhere near the end of her story.
She has plans and passions. She has friends she wants to see and places she wants to go. She likes beautiful things and ridiculous things. She has hobbies, opinions, favorite restaurants, trips living permanently in the group chat and interests that have nothing whatsoever to do with motherhood.
Some days she's dressed beautifully and has everything under control.
Some days she has put on jeans and a T-shirt and is hoping the sunglasses will do the rest.
I want the T-shirt to be good.
I want it to feel like her. I want her to see something about travel or Mahjong or oysters or flea markets or long lunches and think, Well, apparently someone has been spying on me.
I want her to put it on without thinking too hard and still feel stylish. I want it to survive the coffee, the ice cream, the lunch that went on much longer than expected, the suitcase, the errands, the car and the mysterious substance someone got on her shoulder despite all of her children being old enough to supposedly stop putting mysterious substances on her.
Most of all, I want it to add something small and good to her day.
Because no, you probably don't need another T-shirt.
You probably don't need the flowers either.
Or the cappuccino.
Or the vintage plate you somehow carried all the way home from Italy.
You don't technically need to meet your girlfriends for lunch on Thursday, book the weekend away, order dessert after announcing that you are absolutely not ordering dessert, or buy yourself something simply because it made you smile.
But a life made only of the things we absolutely need would be a pretty boring life.
Sometimes the things we don't need are the things that make an ordinary Tuesday feel a little more like ours.
And if one of those things happens to be a really great T-shirt?
I think there's room in the drawer.
Just don't drink the coffee until after you take the picture.
— Jules
Founder, Moms Social
