A maternity-based poll today. It seem s to be all the rage with the rich and famous to be with child these days……….but which of this lot are carrying out their pregnancy in style?

From R-L: Penelope Cruz, Nicole Richie, Gisele Bundchen, Jennifer Hudson, Ellen Pompeo, Sarah Michelle Gellar - 2009 Preggers list

Some sublime/ridiculous outfits in there, whos got their maternity fashion dialled?

We are sure that Holly Willoughby is a really nice person. Its hard not to appreciate her gentle and unthreatening presenting style on mainstream UK TV shows Dancing on Ice and The Xtra Factor. A measure of her success is that her most controversial moment came when she once wore a slightly revealing dress. Good luck to her – here’s Holly in action:

But surely her recently launched line of Maternity Clothing is one of the most unnecessary celebrity fashion lines in history.

Sorry Holly, maybe i am doubting your capacity to organise your life, but i just can’t see how you managed to fit the time to design and develop a range of maternity clothing into your busy schedule.

We realise that we have banged on about this topic before, but this has once again tipped us close to the edge. Why is it these days that, not content with appearing on our TV screens, newspaper column inches and magazine racks at every avaliable opportunity, celebs (or their management teams and desperate retailers more likely) feel the need to impose their fashion sensibilities upon us?.

The message to all these parties should be clear – please stop doing this! – We are perfectly capable of locating and deciding for ourselves what we want to wear. We are not brain dead drones who will instantly want to purchase a line of clothing just because a celebrity has stuck their signature on the label. Please stop paying these unqualified celebrities fortunes (probably) and use the budget to develop innovative and interesting clothing ranges.

Here’s some non-celebrity maternity fashion that rocks – in our opinion obviously!

Peacocks maternity clothes are pretty great – fun designs, stylish, practical and no celebs in site – exactly what we want from maternity clothing, their maternity jeans in particular are great!.

Floral Finish Maternity Top - Elegant

A bit more high-end than we would usually recommend, but some of 9 London’s maternity wear is stunningly designed.

Pretty Pregnant have an appealing mid-range priced line of maternity clothes.

Formes have been a major player for a number of years – like most things French, they have style in abundance.

Anyway, that’s just a few suggestions of ours – we hope you agree with some of them. Don’t listen to the celebritites!

Stylish Maternity Wear

Maternity clothing has became an issue for us recently, as we are now of the age that alot of our friends and colleagues are ‘falling’ pregnant. As if the major, life-changing responsibility of bringing a child into the world wasn’t enough stress, another major worry is ‘oh no!, how am i going to look good pregnant.’

Perhaps our generation are suffering flasbacks from remebering our mothers, whom, pregnant with our younger siblings would wander around for about 4 months looking like an escaped out-patient, wearing tent-like blue ponchos – not very flattering.

Well, the good news is that there is now a decent selection of stylish and affordable maternity wear out there. These are some of the better maternity wear selections available at the moment.

Online Maternity Clothing Ranges

• Dororthy Perkins – A decent range from DP, we are big fans of the Maternity Combat Trousers in particular.
• Isabella Oliver – Diverse Range from Isabella Oliver – there is a nice guide on the site: Maternity Wear No-No’s.
• Peacocks Maternity Clothing – Again, an excellent and stylish range of Maternity Clothes from Peacocks. The range of maternity tops are probably our favourites, cheap as well, leaving more money for nappies.

Stylish Maternity Top from Peacocks

• From Here To Maternity – Fantastic name and some pretty decent maternity clothes.

Nice maternity dress - FHTM

• Lisa B – Little bit more expensive than the others, but very trendy – well worth a look.

These were the standout maternity ranges that we could find online. We had a quick look in Primark, Matalan and TK Maxx today and they all had some decent maternity clothes – perhaps a little more functional than those mentioned above.

If there are any others please get in touch. Anything as long as we don’t end up looking like our mothers!