What to Wear for a Luxury Maternity Photoshoot

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The question arrives with almost every enquiry, usually within the first exchange: what should I wear?

The reassuring answer is that you do not need to bring anything at all. The studio travels with its own wardrobe: an archive built over years and carried between Milan and London for every commission. Understanding what is in it, and how it is used, is the best possible starting point.

The atelier archive

Over the years we have commissioned an archive of maternity gowns made for us by Italian ateliers.

Each piece is handmade, and each is designed specifically for pregnancy: cut to follow the curve rather than compress it, weighted and constructed to move beautifully in a photograph, made to flatter the body at exactly the stage a maternity portrait captures.

The archive holds gowns in every size. No one is asked to fit a sample; the piece is chosen for you. This is one of the quiet differences between an atelier experience and a standard studio: the wardrobe is not a rail of two or three dresses, but a collection travelled to the session and offered in full.

Fabrics, not only finished gowns

Alongside the gowns, the studio carries a selection of loose fabrics: Italian silk, chiffon, taffeta, tulle and others, chosen for how they behave in light and movement.

These are the material of some of the most striking maternity portraits: a length of chiffon caught mid-air, silk draped and falling, a train of taffeta pooling on the floor. Fabric used this way is sculpture in motion, and because it is not a fixed garment it can be shaped to you. Draped, wrapped, layered, in a way no ready-made dress allows.

The details: hats, gloves, jewellery

A portrait is finished in its accessories. The studio brings a selection of hats, gloves, earrings and other pieces, chosen to complete a look without competing with it. A wide-brimmed hat that becomes a frame for the face, gloves that lengthen a gesture, earrings that catch a single point of light.

None of this is an add-on or an upsell. It is simply part of the wardrobe that arrives with the session.

Everything is included

This is the essential point. The entire wardrobe — gowns, fabrics, accessories — is included in the experience and available to you on the day. A client can arrive with nothing from home: the consultation will already have matched pieces to her, her palette, and the mood of the portrait, and everything will be prepared and waiting.

If you would like to bring something of your own

Some clients do want to bring a personal piece, and they are warmly welcome to.

The most common are jewellery and accessories with meaning: a family piece, a gift, something that belongs in a portrait of this chapter.

Others take the occasion to bring a special garment of their own, sometimes a couture piece they rarely have the opportunity to wear; a maternity portrait is a rare and fitting reason to bring it into the light.

Whatever you bring, it is considered together during the pre-shoot consultation. We look at your own pieces alongside the atelier archive and decide, before the day, what serves the portrait best, so that nothing is improvised and everything, whether ours or yours, has been chosen with intention.

A few small things from home

Three practical notes, whatever you decide to wear. On the morning of the session, choose loose, seamless underwear, tight elastics leave marks on the skin that take hours to fade. Keep the manicure neutral; hands rest close to the belly in nearly every pose.

Private maternity commissions are received by application at our Milan studio and, each season, in London. To begin, enquire through the contact page.

About Donatella Nicolini

Donatella Nicolini is an award-winning portrait photographer specialising in elegant, timeless maternity and family photography. Her work is defined by refined styling, sculptural light and a deeply personal approach to every woman she photographs. She creates private portrait experiences in Milan and London.