Let's Talk About Pyjamas
and nothing else
If you’re wondering, I just like the way the ‘y’ looks. I feel it adds an element chicness to pajamas that I believe they deserve. Also, this is how they spell it in much of the rest of the world, though not in Canada (according to my Canadian upbringing).
Before I continue, some very quick housekeeping:
I’m going to start sending out the What’s Up, Pussycat newsletters weekly. I’d initially planned to run them monthly, but I have a bunch of good ones (including from you!) and it seems a shame to wait. They’ll arrive on Tuesdays, so I can sign off each one with “C U Next Tuesday” (listen, in 2025, it’s the little things that will get us through).
Thank you for all the kind notes and emails about last week’s post, and the choir suggestions! I hope you managed to find some joy and pleasure somewhere this week.
When I was close to finishing the first draft of No One Tells You This I gave about fifty pages to a writer colleague to read. They provided some incredible feedback (colleagues who provide useful feedback on first drafts are the rainbow unicorns of the book writing process). But the comment that stands out in my memory is the way they flagged how often I mentioned pajamas: “What do pajamas represent, and why do you keep choosing them? Do they represent the comfort of dreaming, a desire not to "wake up" to a world that rejects who you are as a single woman?”
I did not think the pajamas represented anything. But the note stuck with me. (The memoir editing process is a lot like therapy, and not always in an enjoyable way.) My eventual conclusion was, and remains, that I simply love beautiful clothes and I love comfort and at the center of the Venn diagram between these two things lie pajamas and caftans. Sometimes pajamas are just pajamas!
I’m going to leave a deeper dive into caftans for another, warmer, day. It has been freezing in New York, and even though I enjoy cold weather (see above re Canadian) the frigid temperatures, and the general state of the world, have left me with a desire to remain in my very small apartment, with its overactive radiator, on my couch, with a book. Hence, pyjamas.
Before I tell you all the places I source my pyjamas (I didn’t realize how long the list was until I put it together…I do really like a good pajama!), I want to tell you about my favorite onscreen pajamas. There are many, and they are spectacular. (Prepare yourself for some more Claudette Colbert, though she is only top five…)