In Defence of the Nightdress

The trouble with pyjamas is that they are always asking something of you. Find the matching bottoms. Untwist the waistband. Decide whether this top is really a top or an old T-shirt you have been pretending is a top since 2019.

A nightdress asks you to put it on.

I came late to this understanding. For years I thought nightdresses belonged to other women. Women who owned proper hairbrushes, knew where the spare batteries were, and could answer the door without first checking what they were wearing. In my family, the women had been wearing them all along. I simply thought I was more of a pyjama person.

Then, at some point, I began to notice how much of life happens in the clothes we sleep in. There is the last cup of tea after everyone else has gone to bed. There is the first cup of tea, made while someone is already asking where their shoes are. There is the parcel that arrives at precisely the moment you have taken your bra off. And there are the people you love, who know perfectly well you are at home and think nothing of ringing the bell.

I wanted to feel at ease through all of it. I wanted to open the door without hiding behind it. I also wanted to sleep comfortably, which rules out quite a lot of things that look lovely for the first ten minutes.

This is where the nightdress has been quietly getting on with the job. One piece, on, done. No waistband to negotiate with at the end of a long day. Room to move when you are carrying a sleepy child, reaching for a book on the top shelf, or sitting cross-legged on the bed because you went upstairs to fetch something and forgot what it was.

Of course, a nightdress can go wrong. Some are so thin you find yourself planning a route from bedroom to kitchen that avoids the windows. Others have the unfortunate effect of making you look as though you are waiting for a doctor to come round. This is unfair to a garment with such excellent potential.

The good ones feel lovely against your skin. They give you enough coverage to forget about coverage. They work for the life you actually have, including the bits that never make it into photographs. You can make breakfast in one, greet a friend in one, then climb back into bed for five minutes that become forty. They belong to the part of the day when the house is yours and you can finally loosen your shoulders.

That is the sort of nightdress we are making at Beddressed. Cotton you want to wear all night, and a shape you are happy to be seen in the next morning. Consider this my case for the nightdress. Though, if you have ever had to hunt for a missing pyjama bottom while already half asleep, I suspect it hardly needs defending.