Issue link: https://www.balharbourdigital.com/i/175740
Still, I am not 100 percent sure I am ready to walk down the Champs-Élysées in a pair of commodious draw-string-waisted trousers. working from home—when it's just you and a computer all day long, why bother getting dressed? If I myself have been reluctant to embrace this new style, who can blame me? Years ago, I wore a heavy linen Victorian nightie as an evening dress to a swanky Parisian soirée. (What can I say? It was hot. I was young.) This bold gesture received what I would term politely as a rather cool reception (the French were too refined to throw tomatoes at me, but I could tell from their sour faces this wasn't what they thought constituted appropriate attire for a grown woman.) But even in the City of Light, times have apparently changed: during the couture shows last July, I visited the showroom of Raphaëlla Riboud, who specializes in silk jammies in alluring prints. The vendeuses floating around the atelier were thusly clad, and the highly sensuous offerings were clearly meant for a night of carousing, not just an after-party for two in your pied-à-terre. Still, I am not 100 percent sure I am ready to walk down the Champs-Élysées in a pair of commodious draw-string-waisted trousers. So I decide to phone up the writer/director (and member of Hollywood royalty) Liz Goldwyn, a woman who has spent years prancing down red carpets in vintage ensembles. "I love 1940s lounging pajamas as evening outfits!" she crows. "I wore black satin vintage ones lined in lime green for the opening of Richard Prince's show at Gagosian—so chic!" But then again, Goldwyn lives mostly in LA, where people have long worn tracksuits all day long, and usually they are in their cars anyway, so who knows what they have on? I feel I need to turn to a real New Yorker, the curator Valerie Steele, director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, to get her feelings on this sartorial development. "It's all about the long-term trend toward being comfortable and casual," she confirms, confessing that at this very moment, though in her office, she is swimming in a vast snowy-white Yohji Yamamoto top and a pair of voluminous Jil Sander pants. "But I also think it has to do with global warming," Steele alleges. "This is the way people in the Middle East have dressed for centuries! There are plenty of precedents for this kind of dressing—look at the Brits in India or the Dutch in Indonesia. Why, the very word 'pajama' comes from India!" Thank you, Valerie—these are global sentiments to live by. Just remember as you jump into your jammies, slide into your bunny slippers, strap on your sleep mask and sally forth to meet your CEO: somewhere in the world, it's bedtime. 62 BAL HARBOUR CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: Marc Jacobs takes a bow in pajamas at the Louis Vuitton Fall/Winter 2013 show; a pajama-inspired jumpsuit at the Fall 2013 Diane Von Furstenberg show; a look from Lanvin's Fall/Winter 2013 collection.