TODAY I am mostly wearing ...
my PJs. Yes, that's right folks, the hottest trend this season is the unassuming, much maligned, pyjama suit. Over in celeb-ville - the birthplace of all dubious style diktats - the regulation outfit this summer is last night's pyjamas. Suddenly no self-respecting starlet can be caught leaving home without a saggy-bottomed, billowing pair.
To think: an entire industry of magazines used to seek out such sartorial crimes for the red circle of shame treatment. Changed days. High street stalwart Debenhams has just reported a 34 per cent rise in the sale of pyjamas and a spokeswoman credits the rise to the trend for wearing sleepwear during the day.
If you are conjuring up images of glamorous fluffy mules and the floaty, sheer capes and cream silk sported by old-time divas in black-and-white films, think again. This current trend is a follow-on from the hugely popular onesie, or adult babygro. I got one for Christmas last year. Nobody told me that you are not actually meant to wear them to bed, a lesson I learned the hard way when I woke up at dawn half-cooked and gasping for water.
Once, the sight of a colleague shuffling about in grandpa-style PJs was reserved for charity fundraisers, but now it's open season for bedwear. This poses a dilemma for some supermarkets that have previously come down hard on customers padding around in nightwear to buy a packet of smokes.
I will admit to having left the house in jammies on a handful of occasions. In my defence, most were while I was a student and running to catch a 5pm essay deadline having pulled an all-nighter.
But this look is not a bolt from the blue. Nightwear on show is the inevitable, logical conclusion of the onward slouch towards leisurewear. When I was young, the shellsuit, a Marmite of a garment if ever there was one, divided the country in an aesthetic versus comfort debate. Teamed as they were with perms and big trainers, shellsuits were a style folly but, ooh, so comfy. This is the inherent danger with leisurewear. Once you have experienced its warm, forgiving embrace, it's hard to go back to starched collars and trussed-up tailoring.
The question is, where do we go from here? Will rocking up at the office subsumed in a duvet and nuzzling a battered ted become acceptable? Or, taking a meeting whilst sucking on a soother? No, we need to rein this in now people, before someone trips over a rabbit slipper and breaks an ankle.
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