LizzieMaine
Bartender
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Did the 20's-40's blur the line between bed wear/slopping or entertaining around the house wear/resort wear? I originally assumed the guys were objecting to women's night clothes that weren't ... friendly. Now I'm thinking that wearing pj's to bed was the equivalent of wearing sweatpants and a hoodie to bed.
The pajama fad of 1931-33 was about loungewear, not necessarily sleepwear -- such things as "Beach Pajamas" and "Hostess Pajamas" were designed and cut as casual clothing, in fabrics and styles that would have been a bit much to actually try and sleep in. You'd wear beach pajamas to the beach, and you'd wear hostess pajamas while entertaining at home -- the "something more comfortable" that women in movies are always going off to slip into. You would not wear beach or hostess pajamas at your job, unless you worked as a demonstrator in a department store window, or unless you were Huey Long.
There were also "formal pajamas," which had a skirt effect from the back and were wide-legged pants from the front, and these had nothing to do with sleepwear at all. They were so called because of their cut, not because you wore them to bed. "Pajama" originally meant the wide-legged pants worn by various South Asian dignitaries, and the name was adapted for the wide-legged pants that became a fad in the early thirties. It's that wide-legged cut that made a garment "pajamas," not the idea that it was worn to bed.