On Being An It Girl New Mom

For those in the New York fashion scene, Amrit Tietz’s Vegas wedding to her husband Jon in August last year spread like folklore. Amongst a sea of situationships, the DJ, podcaster, and entrepreneur seemed to achieve the near impossible — match with a fellow creative on Raya and not only actually get a reply but end up married within a year. When she announced her pregnancy the month after, and called it the “hottest accessory this season” on Instagram, Amrit unknowingly became an example of today’s It Girl mom.

The topic of modern motherhood has often been consumed with dialogue around whether you can really “have it all.” For 35-year-old Tietz, who moved from Australia to New York 12 years ago, continuing her DJ career as a mother already redefines what that can even look like. From pregnancy reveals in the deli while opening up about her two previous miscarriages online to DJing New Year’s Eve parties while seven months pregnant, and then posting her stomach at six weeks postpartum to “normalize looking pregnant after the baby,” she’s far less concerned with keeping up certain appearances than she is with keeping it real for her 118k followers and creative community.

“I think becoming a mother is a very nuanced thing, and there are so many chapters or stages which we don’t acknowledge, and having a miscarriage is one of them,” she says. “It’s such a common situation that happens to one in four women, and I think we can create a new set of rules where we share what we feel comfortable with.” While Tietz doesn’t want to be confused for imposing a new standard of openness onto other people, she finds unspoken “rules” like waiting until the first trimester of pregnancy to share the news antiquated. “If acknowledging your current situation and finding community in your audience is what you need to get through something, then that’s what you should do,” she says.

Tietz is similarly more than willing to discuss the realities of birth and postpartum with her friends and followers. “We only get to see one diluted version of birth in the media. Think about Knocked Up,” she says, referring to the film’s shockingly accurate birth scene. Tietz says her emergency C-section after 24 hours of labor taught her that there’s “no birth plan.” “I had a plan with skin contact, golden hour, and bonding all planned. I even made a playlist. But you just have to lean into the fact that there’s no blueprint for pregnancy,” she says. While she never used her playlist, the idea that she would want to DJ her own birthing experience is fitting.

Frankie Tietz was born in February of this year and, since then, Tietz has found one of the biggest shifts in early motherhood has been her sense of time. “There were a lot of surprising shifts with who I spend my time with, who I gave my energy to, and what I gave brain real estate to,” she says. While Tietz is the first to have a child in her immediate friend group, she enjoys showing her younger friends that “you can still be yourself” after birth. “I think a lot of people equate motherhood and losing yourself, losing your career, and losing your personal identity,” she says. “It’s nice to be an example that it doesn’t have to be that way.”

For Tietz, continuing to do what she loves as a mother will “always” involve DJing, her first postpartum set coming just five weeks after giving birth. Thankfully, her large roster of fashion, music, and lifestyle clients means she’s on less of a club circuit and that she can still include her playful approach to personal style. Looking up to Rihanna’s belly-baring looks during her pregnancy outfits, Tietz has a shifting approach to her postpartum body. “I bought myself a pair of leather jeans on the Ssense sale to wear after giving birth and that was delusional, but I didn’t know any better because society has conditioned us to think ‘bouncing back’ is normal when it wasn’t for me,” she says. “I look totally different from before I gave birth and it’s okay.” Tietz says her wardrobe is slightly more “functional” now but that she will always find joy in expressing her identity through outfits.

When Tietz is not with Frankie or DJing at a fashion party, she’s giving dating advice on her podcast, Unhinged. This advice includes the dating shift that changed the trajectory of her own life — reassessing if sticking to a fixed “type” is getting you anywhere. “For a lot of people, it really starts with figuring out what you’re looking for versus what we’ve been conditioned to look for,” she says, which could include height or the desire to date someone in a specific industry. “Find your own deal breakers and then go from there and maybe try to explore new avenues.” Tietz says that after shattering her personal pattern of dating “the same person over and over for a decade,” she found a partner that far surpasses her old type.

It’s little surprise that people are looking to Tietz for relationship advice, especially considering the fact that she’s achieved a notable feat in New York’s dating world: marrying a man with a limited social media presence. In fact, his sole two Instagram posts are shared posts with Tietz of Frankie and their wedding day. “I am an online person but he’s just completely offline so I don’t share a lot about our relationship because of how private he is,” she says. Tietz wants what she does share of their family to be pleasant and unexpected, rather than a pressure added to their relationship. “We’re not producing content like we’re a brand every day,” she adds. “We’re just two people who are married, and once in a while, you get a snippet of it.”

From the moment Tietz shared her pregnancy journey, she’s somehow managed to transcend the fixed edges of the “mommy blogger” or “mommy influencer” label often imposed on women online. This, however, doesn’t mean she won’t continue to share parenting or mom-related content. “Being a mom is one of the many things I do, and it’s one of the most important things I do,” she says. “While it shapes my identity, it is not my only identity, because Frankie is my everything, but there are a lot of other things in my life that also give me meaning.”

Tietz defines being a “good parent” as being the happiest, most content version of yourself. This, coincidentally, is virtually identical to her definition of being an “It Girl,” something she says she hasn’t considered herself before being interviewed for this article.

“Being an It Girl can mean going to the farmer’s market and buying vegetables to make your daughter food because she’s transitioning into solids,” she laughs. “An It Girl does that, too.”