Before we built anything, we talked to women. This is what we heard.
She logs on at 9. She's been up since 6. Already made chai, replied to some messages, done a few things around the house. Her screen is on. Her camera is off.
She's wearing the same thing she wore to bed.
Not because she doesn't care but because nothing fits, nothing's comfortable, and the options she found online look like they were designed for someone's granny.
So she ordered a few oversized t-shirts from a men's section somewhere and is making do. She hates pants right now, even though she's the kind of woman who has a whole system for what she wears to work, but jeans make her feel put together, so some days she still puts them on. Even when it's uncomfortable. Even when she knows she'll regret it by noon.
This is the invisible hour math. Not one hour but all of them.
There's the hour you spend on a video call looking presentable from the chest up. The hour you spend on the floor trying to find a position that doesn't hurt your back. The hour you spend making dinner because someone has to. The hour you spend being productive, creative, switched on while your body is doing something enormous that nobody in the meeting can see.
And what are you wearing through all of it? Whatever fits. Whatever's soft. Whatever stopped making you wince.
One woman told us she wants clothes she can wear at home and not have to change when she steps out. Not because she's lazy, but because the mental overhead of having a "home version" and an "outside version" of yourself is exhausting when you're already operating at capacity.
Another said she doesn't have the bandwidth to deal with changing sizes right now. Her body is changing every week. She needs one thing that works across all of it — not a wardrobe that requires updating every trimester.
A third put it most precisely: she wants a solid cotton dress that looks professional but is actually just a comfortable home dress. She's not asking for fashion. She's asking not to have to choose.
That last sentence is the whole brief.
The maternity market has decided that pregnant women want comfort above everything else. What they actually want is not to have to trade anything. Comfort. Some version of themselves. The ability to step onto a call or step out to the chemist without a costume change.
The invisible hours are real hours. The work happening inside them — the professional work, the household work, the physiological work your body is doing without being asked — is real work.
It deserves better than whatever fits.
be imli is built for exactly these hours. Clothing that works as hard as you do — comfortable enough to forget you're wearing it, considered enough that you don't have to change before you step out.
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