The Wake Up Call

Whether under the influence of style hybridity trends or in the wake of the COVID home epic, office loungewear and pyjama dressing keep rising (and stretching) to the occasion. Surely and steadily, society and fashion converse in mutually sympathetic tones, becoming more lenient and understanding of the need for comfort and adaptability. For better or worse, as the conversation progresses, the confines of intimacy and nonchalance keep mutating. 

Rihanna, sporting Emilio Pucci’s fall pantsuit at the Tokyo premiere of Battleship (2012). The shimmering fabric and royal blue make a chic way of easing an excited audience into a grand movie night. Image available via Elle. © All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.

“It is absolutely out of the question; there is no such thing”, said Mother with a threatening arch of the brow.

“But they gave an official announcement! There are posters everywhere, so it’s been agreed. It’s pyjama day today. It’s allowed. I can wear pyjamas to school”, Daughter replied.

“No one wears pyjamas to school. It’s completely inappropriate. School is school. Every place requires a certain form of dress, and pyjamas are definitely not worn to any public place”. Mother was relentless. And so Daughter went to school dressed in a sober blouse and a sensible pair of jeans.

This dialogue took place in my second year of middle school. I spent the rest of that day secretly envying my classmates, peers, and even teachers for the unbinding loose fit of their shirts, the fleecy softness of their sleeves, and the spacious mobility of their trousers. Little did I know (still less did my mother know) that around the same time in 2012, Rihanna attended the premiere of Battleship in a bedwear pantsuit. It’s a logical fallacy to appeal to the authority of celebrities, but when it comes to cultural shifts and perceptions, events like these are very telling.

At the time, Rihanna’s and Pucci’s leap from loungewear to eveningwear was still a subject for speculation. Shortly after the star’s elegant-but-cozy appearance, Glamour released a short article, asking its readers to vote whether or not the singer’s look was “red carpet worthy”. Yes or no. But with the growth of digital communication, remote work offers, and finally with the outbreak of Corona (which amplified all of the above), the straightforwardness of Glamour’s poll won’t quite cut it. Not anymore.

As Nina Rawall writes in The Walk Mag, “loungewear has emerged not just as a symbol of comfort but a testament to evolving style sensibilities,… blurring the lines between workwear and homewear”. There seems to be a persistent, strengthening continuity between places that make up the landscape of our daily vigil. In the wake of this continuity, consumers and producers alike are becoming more aware – shall we say, awake? – to the mediating, adhesive role played by casual garment. Loungewear office suits, pyjama dresses, nightgowns, and other inhabitants of the domestic district act as a kind of joint or waistband. They knit together labour and languor; endeavour and entertainment; work and wont.

Bridget Jones (Renée Zellweger) taking her children to school. Her appearance is as public as can be. This time, it’s not simply an iconic character outfit; it’s also an acknowledgement that Bridget is moving with the times. Image available via Daily Mail. © All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.  

Maybe this awakening is precisely what makes some people anxious. After all, work is work; school is school; and home is… well… home. Right? And if it’s ill-advised to do one’s laundry in public, wearing it in public is even more so. Yet, why the insistence on diametrical opposition? Designer labels like Moschino have very novel thoughts on that account. Their spring-summer 2025 collection, aptly called “Piece of Sheet”, features skirts, long dresses, and ruffled tops that strongly resemble bedsheets and pillowcases. According to The Post, the collection reflects how the ordinary is sublimated into the extraordinary, and how household items become subjects of obsession – pieces of sheet that can be turned into anything at all. 

Look 02 from Moschino’s SS 2025 collection. The voluminous rectangular drapery is attached to a straight, narrow breast band: the minimalism is as mobile and ethereal as human custom. Image available via Hypebae. © All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended. 

But I think Moschino goes even further than mere exemplification of fluidity. The blank pieces of sheet, which to a modest mind may indeed appear as pieces of something else, speak to the silence that hangs on the lips of mothers and daughters who’ve come to an impasse when a school pyjama day is announced. Even though they be blank slates, clothes carry the premonition of judgment, categorisation, and rejection. A piece of sheet is just a piece of sheet; but Heaven help us if it comes at a bad time and in the wrong place. Unless, of course, it falls into the hands of households like Moschino. Then, indeed, a pillowcase can be as proper, timely, elegant, and witty as a lesson in social decorum. 

What I wish to point out is this. Fashion, being the piece of sheet that it is, does not only divide and file different genres of clothing. It also superimposes them, like squares of blueprint and tracing paper. Fashion is a scroll of unwritten laws that wait to be inscribed and reinterpreted. It’s a dream we dream in our waking hours and a dream that wakes us up in new dimensions. Something we hasten to write down before we forget it, and something we keep writing over as new details come to mind.