The Best Maternity Jeans, According to People Whose Taste We Trust

When Rachel Bowie, the senior editor of special projects and royals at PureWow, was pregnant with her first child, she relied heavily on hand-me-downs from friends and low-cost clothes. But during her second pregnancy, she wanted one pair of versatile, high-quality denim. She had heard about Hatch between pregnancies and decided to splurge on its crop maternity jeans for round two. “They made me feel like I was still part of the world, wearing regular chic clothes,” Bowie says. The jeans come in three washes and 11 baseline sizes. The ankle-length crop also fits Bowie’s petite frame, and she says the fabric mix (92 percent cotton and 8 percent elastomultiester) was soft and comfortable. The bamboo-spandex side wedges are made with the same fiber often used in workout clothes and swimsuits, which means they’re extra stretchy and moisture-wicking (important for pregnancy, unfortunately). Bowie wore them up until her third trimester and resumed wearing them around nine weeks postpartum. They “eased the transition” back to hard pants, she said, and “more than anything, the overall fit doesn’t read as maternity.”

Cathy Peshek, who writes the petite fashion blog Poor Little It Girl, is a mom of three boys all under the age of 4. A regular Abercrombie & Fitch shopper, Peshek picked up Abercrombie and Fitch’s maternity ’90s straight jeans (which regularly go on sale). The jeans “stayed up, didn’t stretch out, weren’t super fitted,” and ran the gamut in waist size and inseam. At four-foot-11, Peshek said, “They were the best maternity jeans I bought,” she gushed. She said the style runs true to size.

Like me, Alisha Ramos — who writes the Downtime newsletter on Substack — wore three pairs of jeans throughout her pregnancy: two non-maternity styles and a pair of maternity jeans from H&M. H&M’s price point felt right for something she’d only be wearing temporarily, Ramos said, but the jeans were still contemporary and fit with what was considered stylish. “I remember it was tough to find maternity jeans in trending styles,” she said, “and H&M fills that gap nicely.”

Connie Wang, writer and author of Oh My Mother, wasn’t happy with any of the jeans she bought during her first pregnancy. For her second go-around, she scoured “every fast-fashion retail site” for the right pair and landed on the maternity wide-leg jeans from Mango. She liked the over-the-bump panel, petite-friendly inseam, and affordable price tag of Mango’s styles. “They felt like jeans,” she said. “They didn’t feel like pretend clothes.” Wang liked them so much she bought two other maternity denim products from the brand: the straight-leg silhouette of the same jeans in black (“which is what I was looking for because the bottom half of my body doesn’t change much at all,” she told me), as well as a pair of dungarees (also in black). “I just rotated them in and out, every single day, forever.”

Duckbill.ai co-founder and CEO Meghan Joyce recently welcomed her third child into the family. Eight years after the birth of her first, much has changed — but her maternity jeans of choice have not. “I remember so distinctly with my first pregnancy … feeling unconfident and a step behind in every aspect of my life,” Joyce said. “Nothing fit well, and nothing felt good” until she stumbled upon the AG maternity Prima ankle jeans. “I have this vivid memory of where I was when I was walking home” from the shop where she purchased them, and feeling “so enlivened and rejuvenated,” she said. But what really sets these jeans apart: There’s no visible elastic anywhere on them. No over-the-belly band, no side panels on the waist. Just jeans that look like jeans no matter what stage of pregnancy you’re in.

Amie Epstein, vice-president at the market-research company Ipsos, relied on Old Navy’s full-panel skinny jeans throughout her pregnancy in 2024. Epstein described shopping for plus-size maternity denim as “trying to find a needle in a haystack.” Epstein liked that they’re available up to a size 20 and run big. They’re also available in three inseam lengths — short, regular, and long — and five different washes. Epstein wore hers while touring around Europe, at work (paired with blazers), and while lounging on weekends from around 20 weeks pregnant until she delivered her baby. “The belly band still had plenty of room” when she gave birth, she said. Strategist writer Lauren Ro also chose these pants while pregnant as she wanted something plain with a relaxed leg. She loved that the denim was stiff and structured — but still comfortable — and “I actually feel cute in them,” she said.

Though not technically a pair of pregnancy jeans, Free People’s We the Free Midnight Voyage Harem Jeans are soft and stretchy enough that Cheerie Lane Popcorn co-founder Kate Greer wore them comfortably throughout pregnancy and beyond. They come in both a regular and short inseam and sit extra low, below the bump, which Greer said was her preference generally. “It turns out that after you have kids, you don’t want to wear anything tight anymore,” she laughed, so she also recommended the brand’s similarly low-rise but non-denim River Stone Pants, which are currently on sale for half the price.

Influencer Carly Riordan is a mom of two and self-described denim connoisseur — and she raves about the Paige Anessa wide-leg maternity jeans as her ultimate selection. Unlike me, she had the foresight to choose a more current fit from the brand, and the Anessa stood out against the other half-dozen pairs she ordered and tried on for her second pregnancy. They “felt like yoga pants,” she said, and were so comfortable she almost felt like she “was cheating the system.” The waistband style is below the bump, but the fabric reaches up high enough that Riordan didn’t feel like she needed to worry about extra-long shirts or tunics. The jeans’ fabric blend of 93 percent cotton, 5 percent polyester, and 2 percent spandex maximizes for softness and stretch while maintaining shape structure over multiple wears, and she wore them regularly from the day they arrived at the beginning of her second trimester until months after she gave birth. “I would prefer wearing those to pretty much everything else,” Riordan said.

The Still Here Cool jeans are for anyone who wants that just-unbuttoned-pants feeling all the time. Fashion writer Liana Satenstein said she “marinated in” the pair she was gifted by the brand toward the end of her recent pregnancy and wore them so much it was “embarrassing,” she said. The straight, wide-leg, and 32-inch inseam pair drapes loosely and gently for a never-suffocating feel, but more importantly, they can be worn fully unbuttoned because of the adjustable drawstring. Satenstein, who is “five-foot-seven on a good day,” had hers tailored but is still wearing them after giving birth. “I really love them,” she said. “I can’t say enough how great they are.”

Rag & Bone’s Miramar wide-leg Trompe L’oeil pants aren’t jeans — but you wouldn’t know it at first. They’re sweatpants that only look like jeans, with cotton fabric and printed-on pockets, belt loops, seams, and even rivets. An elastic waistband makes them pregnancy-friendly, and they run large — perfect for growing bellies and their bearers, especially for those who are sick of athleisure but who can’t quite stomach the feeling of denim. They look like hard pants, but feel like pajamas, and several Strategist editors are devotees. Rag & Bone also makes them as shorts — which I’ll be purchasing, pregnant or not, this spring.