The Zalando Toddler Style Challenge

Confession: my daughter probably has way too many clothes. T-shirts, leggings, jeans, dresses, shorts, tights – the girl has a better wardrobe than me. But I don’t feel too guilty about this, for two reasons:

1. I love to buy bargain kids’ clothes. Whether it’s Sainsbury’s TU (2 pairs of leggings for £5? Go on then…) or the BabyGap sale, I’m all over a good deal.

2. Having lots of kids’ clothes is part of my ‘getting to work in one piece’ strategy each morning. The morning routine is one that could go wrong at any second. One wrong turn by me, and we’ll be in the throes of a tantrum that will delay everything by 20 minutes. So by giving her a choice of outfits each day, I minimise the risk of tantrums.

Luckily, I love shopping for girls’ clothing, and I love styling little outfits for her to choose from. I’m all about bright colours, bold patterns and clashing. I think kids dressed in cool greys and muted tones look awesome, but they somehow don’t look right on my little one.

So the Zalando Toddler Style Challenge is right up my street. Here’s how it works: shopping website Zalando challenged myself and fellow blogger Molly from Mother’s Always Right to buy our little ones an outfit, style it up and show it off. I’ll be honest, I hadn’t shopped at Zalando before they set me this challenge, and boy was I surprised by how many kids’ brands they stock, and how many cute things I had to choose from. I nearly went for a Joules dress and some Converse trainers, but in the end, I chose a Tootsa MacGinty St Ives dress with geometric print and a red Esprit jacket. I styled them with a pair of purple leggings (model’s own) and white sandals with pink polka dots (model’s own).

Of course, bringing the phrase Never work with children or animals to life, my daughter point blank refused to wear the jacket. Not because she didn’t like it. But because she’s 2-nearly-3 and she didn’t feel like it. And because I asked her again and again, and she could tell I really wanted her to wear it. Hence why it’s hanging off her scooter handlebars in these pics, not on her.

So head over to Mother’s Always Right to see the outfit that Molly chose and how she styled it. Been over to have a look? Yes, it’s the SAME Tootsa MacGinty dress. I’d like to point out here that Molly and I didn’t confer when shopping for our outfits – yet out of the hundreds of brands and products on sale at Zalando, we chose the same dress. SPOOKY. But we styled it differently, so the Toddler Style Challenge is still on. Comment below to say which toddler outfit you prefer!

Big thanks to Zalando for working with Not Another Mummy Blog!