Mother's Day is a really good invented holiday. Some of the others, like Valentine's Day, kind of bother me but I am 100% on board with a day that celebrates mothers!
Mothers and daughters have a special place in my heart, because I am a daughter and more importantly, because I am a mother to only daughters. So it might come as no surprise to you that I have a mini obsession with vintage "Mommy and Me" outfits.
Since Mom's are pretty important to their daughters, it's also not surprising that Mommy and Me outfits have been around for a long time - Celebrity moms have always loved coordinating mother daughter clothing! Joan Crawford has become infamous for the matching outfits she wore with her daughter, Christina. But other mothers and daughters (without such tumultuous relationships) have also been known to wear matching or coordinating outfits! Katie Holmes, Madonna, Lauren Bacall, Shirley Maclaine, and Judy Garland, just to name a few.
Oddly, we don't see matching outfits on mothers and daughters in products or print advertisements anymore. I wonder if that is a statement on society or if it was just something that the world decided was no longer in style. What do you think ended the love affair with "mommy and me" outfits?
There used to be Mother and Daughter costume paper dolls!
Mother and daughter matching knits were VERY popular and all of the yarn companies had pattern books exclusively for them at one time or another.
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Indian Head Cotton Fabric Ad[/caption]
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Arnold Scaasi vintage dresses for a mother and daughter in an ad for Cadillac[/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400.0"]
Mother - Daughter matching leopard coats in a Cadillac Ad[/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400.0"]
Body By Fisher ad with Mother and Daughter wearing matching coats.[/caption]
Vintage Coca Cola Ad featuring mother and daughter in matching dresses[/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400.0"]
Morton Salt Ad featuring Mother and Daughter in matching dresses and aprons[/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400.0"]
1960's Grape Nuts ad featuring matching mother and daughter[/caption]
Dr. West's toothbrush ad [/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400.0"]
Mother and Daughter in matching dresses for Dr. West's Toothbrushes[/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400.0"]
Vintage Kotex advertisement featuring mother and daughter in matching dresses[/caption] 
So did we stop wanting to be like our moms? Or did the world finally realize that matching outfits doesn't make a little girl into a carbon copy of her mother? Maybe it's just as simple as - they went out of style, and I am over-thinking it. Still, I like to imagine what the images would look like in magazine ads today, if mothers and daughters still wore matching dresses! Would they both be on their cell phones, (sad), running a marathon, working at the same office, or in a spin class together? I LOVE mommy and me dresses, but my daughters are passed the age of compliance! We wear matching pajamas during the holidays and that's about as far as it goes. I hope we haven't seen the end of matching mother daughter outfits, but I hope that we wear them with the spirit of fun, knowing that our daughters are much, much more than miniature versions of ourselves!
HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!!