It’s the question I’m asked most often: “Do you have any suggestions as to what we should wear?”  Dressing one person for photos is easy, but dressing multiple people can get tricky!  I’ve already written a post on dressing your family, but since this time of year, I photograph mainly high-school seniors and children, I’ll focus on them this time.   It’s easy to give advice to the seniors–I tell them to wear something that defines them, something they love, something they’re comfortable in.  Children, on the other hand, can be more challenging, especially when there are multiple children involved.  It is much more intesting if the children are not wearing the same outfit or matchy-matchy outfits. I did some online shopping for you tonight to recommend some of my favorite stores/websites that make coordinating easy for you.  

Mini Boden makes it easy–they have a gallery of outfit ideas. Here are a few that I thought would be great for portraits:

Naartjie loves to mix wild patterns and colors, which I think makes for an interesting portrait! They have separate lines that make it easy to mix & match within lines. Here are a few of my favorites (in pairs), mostly from the Summer 2 & 3 lines:

Gap makes it extremely easy to coordinate by having boy/girl lines with the same names. The top outfits are from the Rainforest collection and the bottom are from the Coastal Favorites collection.

When compiling the above combinations, I found it easier in most cases to choose the girl’s outfit first, and then the boy’s, but that doesn’t have to be the case. Find one outfit that you love, and then try to find one that coordinates! This is often easiest to do within one store, but of course you can find coordinates by shopping around. I did mostly boy/girl groupings, but in all of the stores I listed there are plenty of other mix & match items.   

Another favorite store of mine, Hanna Andersson, has a family area in which they have 3-4 lines with coordinating items for the whole family.  I believe Gymboree does the same thing around the holidays.  If you are looking for a more classic, clean look, check out Crew Cuts, which J. Crew for kids.  Janie and Jack has separate lines for boys & girls, but sometimes they will have the same line for both boys & girls that coordinates. 

I hope that helps…I am no fashionista, but I have learned what looks good in portraits over the past couple of years. Some of my clients are VERY good at this clothing thing!