Well, not the accessory. They’re more like an accessory for an accessory — the accessory being those long scarf-type baby slings, which are basically like the new pashminas, according to today’s Times. In the beginning, some women were skeptical of the look, like Natasha Ossinova:
“At first it was like, ‘Am I trying to be an indigenous tribal woman?” Ms. Ossinova said, noting that she had four other carriers at home. “But I got over that hump, and I’m quite passionate about it now.”
It helped that, according to the Times, “celebrities like Brad Pitt and Keri Russell [have been] pictured in star-gazing magazines and blogs with their babies strapped to their bodies” — everyone wants to look like Felicity! — and also that the baby carriers coming out now are sufficiently unaffordable to the indigenous tribal women who probably make them. Like the ones at Metro Minis on Park Avenue, which was recently packed with moms trying on the new thing:
A tall, lithe woman from Hell’s Kitchen in West Midtown hoisted her 11-month-old daughter on her back in an Asian-style mei tai she had chosen from a drawer of samples, while another woman in sleek jeans gazed at herself in a full-length mirror, her baby snug against her chest in a soft black canvas carrier that matched her jacket. A young mother from Queens adjusted her snoozing newborn in a fuzzy fleece pouch as other mothers perused the store’s approximately 60 models of baby carriers, ranging from a $40 cotton wrap to a $540 sling, hand dyed and loomed from lustrous wild silk.
It’s actually very complicated, because naturally you want a baby carrier that matches your jacket, but it also needs to match the baby, which is hard. For instance, black could wash the baby out. And you can’t really have an Asian-style baby with the Asian-style mei tai, because it would look too costume-y. Personally we’d just do away with the baby altogether — much simpler that way.
