How taking your kids to school turned into an adult fashion show

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Louboutins. Leather pants. Jaunty fur jacket. For most women, it would be over the top for a Friday night out, but for Elle Macpherson? Just what she slips into to drop the kids off at school.

The Aussie supermodel and lingerie designer is leading the pack of celebrity power-moms – including Claudia Schiffer, Victoria Beckham and Gwen Stefani – who are turning the school run – a Briticism for the school drop-off and a source of fascination in their tabloids – into a runway.

According to a recent survey by British supermarket Sainsbury's, the first school run of the year was a bigger deal for some moms than their children. Of 2,000 mothers surveyed, the Telegraph reports, 70 per cent admitted they were nervous about what the other mothers thought of them.

They also spent on average up to 25 minutes getting ready, which was seven minutes longer than the time they spent on their children. And as a rule for the rest of the school year, 75 per cent said they would never wear the same outfit on a school run two days in a row. (Britons have since dubbed this the "Elle effect.")

This so-called Elle effect is on prime display in I Don't How She Does It, the new hit film based on the bestselling novel of the same name, starring real-life mom Sarah Jessica Parker.

In the movie, Parker plays Kate Reddy, a hyper-achieving, well-heeled mother of two determined to balance a demanding career with minding her brood – and look great doing it in cashmere coats and pearls, a fact that's noticed and envied by some other moms in the film. ("I am so jealous you get to look nice all day! We just frump around in the park," a frienemy snipes at Parker's character at one point.)

As the first generation of celebrity babies hits school-age, the public's famous-mom fixation – fed by the tireless 24/7 celebrity gossip cycle – has moved from baby-bump watch to the school run (Beyonce notwithstanding) – and the scrutiny is heating up. Macpherson, who regularly elicits clucks from the tabloid-watchers for her runway-ready school-run attire, chose to clear the air about her glamorous style in a British magazine interview with Radio Times. Her defence? She's simply dropping off 8-year-old Cy before heading straight to work. (The 48-year-old is currently the host of Britain's Next Top Model, as well as the designer of a successful namesake lingerie line.)

"[Moms]are going to dress up for whatever they're doing after they drop their kids at school," agrees Bernadette Morra, editor-in-chief of FASHION magazine and a mother of two, who also offers another perspective: Can't a woman simply love fashion and want to look her best? In other parts of their lives, the main school-run culprits are well-known for their fashionable endeavours – Schiffer's knitwear line, Macpherson's lingerie collection, Stefani's L.A.M.B. clothing. "Anybody who loves fashion [is]going to head out the door loving what they have on, 99 per cent of the time, unless the house is on fire," Morra says.

Keeping tabs on school-run style is a natural progression for celebrity-obsessed parents, says Mira Jacobs, deputy editor of Babble.com, a parenting website with a popular celebrity section. What starts out as a fascination with the pregnant body – from bump watch to "how quickly that celeb can get back into a bikini" watch – eventually becomes style notes on how one balances life and looking fabulous. "There is a kind of new scrutiny of motherhood," Jacobs adds, "and, as the kids get older, part of the scrutiny definitely has to do with [the mother's]physical appearance."

On the occasion that a celebrity goes for the dressed-down look on the school run, Jacobs says, you can almost hear a sigh of relief from harried moms who have family dinner and a good night's sleep, not Jimmy Choos, on the brain. When a celebrity mother shows up in sweats to pick up her kids, "it probably reassures [regular moms]that, 'Wow, she didn't get it all together today, either. At least I know celebrities can't even do it. It's not that bad that I can't,' she concludes.

For her part, Morra says she never went to the park without full makeup, even when her boys were babies. "That's just who I am," she says. "I'm not dressing for the other moms at school; I'm certainly not dressing to impress my kids and all the other kids. I'm dressing well when I go out the door because that's what I love to do."