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Dressed: The History of Fashion
Beach Pajamas: From Sleepwear to Sportswear, an interview with Janine D'Agati and Hannah Schiff (Dressed Classic)
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- [00:00]
April Callaghan
Your call has been forwarded to voicemail. Hi, this is Zoe Deutsch and Nick Robinson.
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Zoe Deutsch
Our brand new movie Voicemails for Isabel is all about those little moments that feel like the universe is looking out, feeling homesick.
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Janine Dagati
Then your sister calls, hearing that perfect
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Zoe Deutsch
song exactly when you need it.
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Nick Robinson
Please stay.
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Zoe Deutsch
Sometimes life rigs things in our favor, like learning about your new favorite rom com Voicemails for Isabel, now playing only on Netflix.
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Podcast Host (possibly Cassidy Zachary)
Please enjoy one of our favorite episodes from the Dressed archive of over 500 plus shows.
- [01:06]
April Callaghan
The history of Fashion is a production of dressed media. With over 8 billion people in the world, we all have one thing in common. Every day, we all get dressed.
- [01:19]
Podcast Host (possibly Cassidy Zachary)
Welcome to Dressed the History of Fashion,
- [01:22]
Podcast Host (possibly Cassidy Zachary or co-host)
a podcast that explores the who, what, when of why we wear.
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Podcast Host (possibly Cassidy Zachary)
We are fashion historians and your hosts,
- [01:27]
April Callaghan
Cassidy Zachary and April Callaghan. Dress listeners. Depending where you are in the world, it's highly likely that many of you have already engaged in one of summer's great pleasures, a trip to the beach. And it's certainly time for that here in New York City, where the weather this past weekend was in the mid-80s. Cass so many of my friends decamped the city, packed a cooler, and headed out to our beautiful stretches of sand on the coast of Brooklyn and Long Island. And I know that people don't think of the beach when they think of New York City. But trust me, friends, we have amazing beaches that are just a subway ride away. So what about you, Cass? Do you have any beach plans soon?
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Podcast Host (possibly Cassidy Zachary or co-host)
No, not a lot of beach plans. Pool plans, yes, but no beaches. Living in New Mexico, unfortunately, it's more of a vacation destination activity for me rather than a ride on the subway. You're very lucky. So more of a special occasion activity. And of course, special occasions frequently open up the door for all of us to do a little bit of fanciful dressing. And such was certainly the case historically at many of the luxurious beach hotspots that were patronized by the ultra wealthy, for whom the pursuit of pleasure was their only quote unquote job. Must be Nice. And at the turn of the century, styling oneself for soaking up the sun was the preoccupation of many of the leisure set who frequented the glamorous destinations like the Italian Lido and French beach towns of Deauville and Biarritz.
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April Callaghan
A languid cosmos unto their own, it must be said. These resorts which have been described as such in a primary source quote. A place where collars and neckties don't exist, where one sleeps after lunch on the sun baked deck of a sheltered boat, where one motors in open cars regardless of hot sunlight or cool moonlight, where tomato juice cocktails are the popular order at the bar, where one watches serious gambling at casinos at 2 in the morning and makes foolish bets at an amateur boxing match, where it's part of the day's sport to shop for espadrilles and sailor sweaters and backstreet shops, to play bridge in bathing suits on the rocks of Antibes and to eat food fish dinners at nameless places along the shore. I just want to know when we are going to this place, Cass Exactly.
- [03:55]
Podcast Host (possibly Cassidy Zachary or co-host)
And what will we be wearing at this fantasy sojourn? Well, for many soigne sunseekers looking for comfort without sacrificing chic, the answer was beach pajamas. And perhaps a lesser known type of garment today, beach pajamas were widely popular. That's a little bit of a pun. During the 1920s and 1930s. Define categorization as they evolve from the bedroom to the beach and from loungewear to sporting attire. We are so pleased to have Janine Dagati and Hannah Schiff join us today to discuss their recently released book From Sleepwear to How Beach Pajamas Reshaped Women's Fashion. This book is an incredible 10 years in the making and the title brings us groundbreaking research on beach pajamas and the role they played in the gradual acceptance of women wearing pants mid century as well as the evolution of sportswear styles which dominate our very own closets today. There is so much to unpack here. Janine Hanna, welcome to Dressed.
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April Callaghan
Ladies. Thank you so much for joining us on Dressed.
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Hannah Schiff
Thank you for having us.
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Janine Dagati
Thanks so much.
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April Callaghan
Yeah, and congratulations on the book coming out. I remember all those many, many years ago when you all had just begun your research phase and you came to visit us at fit. So ever since then I've been very patiently waiting for the book to come out so we could invite you to come on the show. So thank you so much for being here with us today. And I, I think this promises to be a very interesting discussion because very little scholarly inquiry has been directed to beach pajamas until now, and as the subtitle of your book states, how they shaped fashion. So would you first like to maybe introduce yourselves, tell us a little bit about your background before we jump right into our pajama party today?
- [05:48]
Janine Dagati
Sure. I am the owner of Garamont Vintage. I specialize in 20s to 40s women's fashion, as you know. So I've been studying beach pajamas since I started the store in, like, 2012, and I've been collecting them so since then.
- [06:07]
Hannah Schiff
For Hannah.
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Ollie Advertisement Voice
Hi.
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Hannah Schiff
Yeah, I'm Hannah Schiff, fashion historian who also works in the fashion and beauty industry. Long term vintage collector as well. And I feel like that's sort of a nice link between the two of us that really helped with this project is our appreciation and understanding of the physical garments and then that sort of in reverse to the history.
- [06:29]
April Callaghan
Yeah, yeah, well, so. So let's just jump right in if we can. Pajamas. I think a lot of people obviously know this term, but they might not necessarily know its history. When and where do we first start seeing this term being used? And what types of garments was the term initially referring to?
- [06:51]
Hannah Schiff
Yeah, so we first start seeing the use of the term pajamas in English around 1800, and it was coined at that time from the Hindustani word epijama, which roughly translates to leg clothing. In 1886, in the Hobson Jobson dictionary, which was a collection of colloquial Anglo Indian phrases, they describe pajamas as a pair of loose drawers or trousers worn in India by both sexes and varied classes. So it's linguistically rooted in Anglo Indian terminology. But bifurcated garments have been worn by men and women for millennia across a variety of Middle Eastern and Asian cultures. And what wound up happening is as the term started really joining English colloquial language, these assorted garments which had stylistic overlaps like loose fit in the hips, drawstring, waist, they all became conflated under this one overarching term, pajama.
- [07:48]
April Callaghan
And I mean, your book contains some really lovely explanations of the role of dress in the spread of Orientalism as both an artistic and also an aesthetic movement. Would you guys like to define Orientalism for our purposes today as it applies to pajamas? And. And how did pajamas function in this Western imagination of the quote unquote East?
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Hannah Schiff
Yeah, so conceptually, Orientalism sort of refers to the observation and interpretation of Eastern culture through a Western gaze. And we really focused on the legacy of the Orientalist art movement that was especially prominent in the 19th century. It's this period when Western artists Are taking inspiration from Asian and Middle Eastern cultures. You see it reflected in chinoiserie or Japanism, which are more specific examples under this umbrella of Orientalism. And it was especially prominent in French art and fashion, which was already considered at the foremost forefront of Western taste. So these French designers and painters are taking elements from Eastern culture, including the dress things that become referred to as harem pants or harem trousers. And because women in the Western world were almost never publicly seen at this time in bifurcated garments, this image of the Eastern woman in pajamas and the bifurcated trousers became conflated with kind of hedonistic and passionate and eroticized themes that are then commonly depicted in art. And then in the early 20th century, the ballets Russes kind of capitalized on these associations with performances set in eastern lands like Scheherazade in 1910, which featured female dancers in harem pants. And the popularity of the show leads to this vogue for Eastern themed fancy dress parties among wealthy where these pajama style garments are worn as fantastical costumes.
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Janine Dagati
Also, these celebrated, celebrated Orientalist paintings like Renoir's odalisques and Delacroix's harem scenes and the Ballets Russe performances, they just familiarized Western audiences with a bifurcated silhouette that was seen as essentially feminine, as opposed to one that men, at least in the Western cultures, weren't primarily associated with already.
- [10:06]
April Callaghan
I mean, and that translates straight into high fashion as well, and even haute couture. In the work of Paul Paulhret. There you do discussion about the jupe culottes, which if you see the jupe culottes worn, you can barely tell that they're even bifurcated at all.
- [10:21]
Janine Dagati
It was still controversial.
- [10:23]
April Callaghan
Yeah, exceptionally controversial. When do we start to see pajamas entering into this Western fashion system? Is it. Is it the 19 teens and. And who was wearing them initially?
- [10:35]
Hannah Schiff
Yeah, so pajamas in the more traditional sense, sleeping pajamas, you know that. That's really when they first started entering Western society. And it was around 1870, when these garments are being brought back from India by British colonists and missionaries and they were worn as men's sleepwear. But at first it was kind of considered a novelty of the wealthy and eccentric, but eventually they. They actually fairly quickly replaced popular men's night shirts. And then in a very short amount of time, everything escalates. The men's sleeping pajama becomes a lot more tailored. Instead of having more of this traditional Indian aesthetic, it's more like a men's suit. What we think of as sleeping pajamas. But with a few Eastern design elements, the mandarin collars, broad closures, and then it very quickly takes off in women's wear. Women start borrowing pajamas, even stealing them from their husband, as we do. Right, exactly. They're like, oh, it's comfortable, I want it. And by 1895, pajama sets and patterns were being retailed for women in department stores. And these designs, again, at first they start off very similar to men's pajamas and then immediately start deviating with these feminine details of lace and ribbons and little frills. Got them. Make it our own.
- [11:50]
April Callaghan
And this is not necessarily the first time that in within Euro American fashion systems that women had adopted bifurcated garments at all.
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Hannah Schiff
Right.
- [12:00]
April Callaghan
This is just another rise of the bifurcated garment. Do you maybe want to situate this particular pajama moment of, like, the late 19th century, early 20th century within a broader history of women wearing pants or bloomers? Absolutely, yeah.
- [12:17]
Janine Dagati
The.
- [12:17]
Hannah Schiff
The pajama craze of the interwar period. Like, it really feels like this missing link in discourse in the trajectory of women in the west wearing pants first started researching this. There's so much scholarship on bifurcated dress regarding bloomerism or, you know, women in the post World War II era adopting pants. But women didn't start wearing pants overnight. It was this very gradual process. And the vogue for beach pajamas really contributed to that. So we sort of think of beach pajamas succeeding where bloomers fail. Bloomerism introduced the general public to this notion of the trousered woman. But beach pajamas, by emerging in this sort of nebulous space of the beach, where it's less public, there's less formal rules around what you're supposed to be wearing. And also emerging slightly later than bloomer is in the late 1910s, early 1920s, it's a different social climate, and it just created a set of conditions where they were able to slowly spread from these marginal spaces and into the public sphere and transitioned into the post war pants that we hear so much about.
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April Callaghan
Well, I also wonder if part of that schism between the failure of bloomerism and also the rise of the beach pajamas has probably a lot to do with politics.
- [13:37]
Hannah Schiff
Right.
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April Callaghan
Because the women that were engaging in reform dress and the dress reform movement that were wearing bloomers, there was a very political stance attached to a suffrage movement at the time. The beach pajamas come in as, like, high fashion. Hannah, I'm really glad you brought up that point about liminality in dress. I think that some of the nuance that existed between the late 19th and early 20th century, in terms of dressing appropriately for the time of day has been lost to us today a bit. And maybe, Janine, you can speak about this because you are an aficionado of this era. There's this category of dress that's called desabier, or we would call it undress, that doesn't necessarily exist today in modern fashion as it did then, as like a really important category of dress. Or maybe it doesn't occupy a significant place in women's wardrobes like it did then. Today we would lose, like, call it loungewear, but it really is so much more than that historically. So, Janine, do you want. Maybe you want to speak to this idea of liminality? Like in the book you guys write, the settings in which beach pajamas could be worn were somewhat indefinable. And I think this entire category is that.
- [14:51]
Janine Dagati
Yeah, I think beach pajamas are so unique in that way. In most aspects, they're this liminal in between garment. They straddled sleepwear and sportswear, public and private dress, the masculine and the feminine, east and West. And there was a lot of confusion about how to categorize them initially. They sort of had this amorphous identity that didn't really fit neatly into any single category. And for that reason, they eschewed a lot of the social rules pertaining to different types of dresses. Time and the extremely specific occasions when women could wear pants at the time were essentially disrupted by this interloper. And I know that liminality is kind of an overused term in academia today, but I really think that in this case, it's a significant factor to consider when you're thinking about why beach pajamas might have been able to have such a lasting influence and escape a lot of the criticism that previous bifurcated women's garments fell victim to. And there's an anthropologist called Bjorn Thomason who's written a lot about liminality in terms of social and cultural shifts. And he sees the liminal as being characterized not just as a threshold space, but by a disruption to the established social structure and an uncertainty prevailing about tradition, uncertainty about the future. It's not just a state of being in between, but the state of being in between can impart a revolutionary quality. It could be a time of experimentation, boundary testing. That's definitely something that happened with dressing at the seaside. It's a threshold space, and things are a lot more casual. Women had more leeway appearing in public wearing pants, whereas in the street, that wasn't accepted. So beach resorts were uniquely positioned outside of the Confines of normal everyday life, both spatially and temporally. So you're living in this kind of like, vacation from the real. And then another factor, another interesting kind of liminal factor, is the time period that beach pajamas first appeared, which was in the aftermath of the first World War. And it was such a period of social disruption. A lot of societal norms were in flux, including established gender roles, you know, because as you mentioned, women during the war, for example, were going to work for the first time, and they were working in factories, doing agricultural work and farming, typically men's jobs. And for those jobs, they were often wearing overalls or dungarees. And after the war, women were expected to return to their former domestic occupations. But there was still a lot of lingering uncertainty and this taste of something different in the air. There had been a major break in the status quo. And I think that really helped. All these factors of liminality and kind of like being on the precipice of something, being in this murky sort of time period and setting, really helped with the societal acceptance of beach pajamas.
- [17:59]
April Callaghan
Yeah, well, even in this bigger category of just pajamas at large, because you have mentioned sleeping pajamas, and then we've now talked about beach pajamas, there were other types as well. There's even like this social coding of hierarchy of formality within this very niche category of pajamas. Would one of you like to speak about that a little bit?
- [18:20]
Janine Dagati
There were so many types. They all had different names. You know, kitchenette, lounging, porch pajamas, gardening pajamas, everything under the sun. But the four main categories, I think, are sleeping pajamas, beach pajamas, lounging pajamas, and evening pajamas. And that's an order of increasing formality generally. Typically, materials were a good indication of usage. So more elaborate designs and like diaphanous fabrics like satins and lace and silk, those were seen more as indoor attire. And then more durable materials like denim and linen were typically used for outdoor wear. But that said, the reality was far from being as cut and dry as that. And there was so much crossover in materials and design elements between the pajama categories. They were ornate and embellished pajamas with beading marketed as sleepwear. And then beach pajamas were sometimes made with materials like swan's down, velvet and linnet, materials that a modern beachgoer would not consider appropriate. Like, there's one photo in particular that we included, that's a model at the Lido, and she's wearing a beach pajama ensemble with. That's either. It's either lame or sequin encrusted trousers, and she's holding her coat open and it's entirely fur lined. So we get into the terminology weeds a lot more in depth in the text. But essentially the thing that makes beach pajamas so unique is that their only true defining characteristic is their usage as public outdoor attire.
- [19:53]
April Callaghan
Whereas something like you referred to evening pajamas and we're saying evening pajamas, you're not necessarily meaning for sleep. These are like you. If you're throwing a dinner party in your home and you are the hostess, this is something that you might wear being a little bit more casual as the hostess in your own home. But these were akin to an evening gown in many ways. Right. They were just with pants and sometimes
- [20:16]
Janine Dagati
they were kind of indecipherable from an evening gown. They were. The legs were so wide that they looked like an evening gown and you only kind of noticed if someone was moving in a certain way. So they're really interesting for that reason.
- [20:29]
Hannah Schiff
Yeah. They even often call them divided skirts.
- [20:31]
Janine Dagati
Yeah.
- [20:32]
April Callaghan
So what do we know about these very daring darlings who began strolling the shores in their pajamas, you know, when and where? Because in a lot of ways, this trend for beach pajamas is very much interwoven with these narratives of social class and the leisure lifestyle.
- [20:51]
Hannah Schiff
Yeah. So it's. It's incredibly challenging, if not completely impossible to pinpoint the exact moment that pajamas first emerged from the boudoir and onto the beach. Are a little bit unusual in that they initiated as an anti fashion garment born to meet specific sartorial needs that women had that just weren't being met by the existing categories of dress. So rather than couture is kind of driving this new trend and it then trickling down to mass market ready to wear. This was sort of an inversion where the fashionable elite brought pajamas onto the beach, which prompted designers to take note. We do know that pajamas were first worn on beaches in the late 1910s. And all evidence points to them being debuted at European resorts, with Deauville in France being especially likely as a point of origin. But while this fashion was driven by the people, the earliest adopters of beach pajamas were in the upper echelons of society. These were women who were well accustomed to living lives of leisure and luxury, and they were also already well accustomed to wearing luxurious pajamas indoors for private occasions like lounging or hosting friends. So there is definitely a strong class element guiding beach pajamas, at least in their inception in the fashion market. The earliest example of pajamas that we've been able to find as seaside attire were worn by a French comedic actress named Andrea Spinelli, who was well known for her legs. And she debuted them in a pair of black silk pajamas that were worn in Deauville and featured in Vogue in 1919. She sort of embodies this, the kind of woman who was an early adopter of beach pajamas. And she was prominently seen wearing them at many pajama suppers at these resorts, along with other fashionable bright young things and daring lace pajamas. And then the other kinds of people that were wearing early pajamas were again, very top tier society. There was Princess Odiscalci, who apparently wore a different pair of pajamas every single day of her month's long vacation at the Venetian Lido. Coco was a prominent pajama wearer. Amelia Earhart, Jean Harlow. So a lot of these society figures and notable names really help put pajamas on the mat.
- [23:12]
April Callaghan
Yeah. If you had enough money or enough social clout, you could disobey all sartorial norms, basically. Yeah. So, and, you know, as you reference, it would not be long until high fashion decided to co op this subcultural cool of these women who were wearing beach pajamas. And. And many of these ultra, ultra chic women who were wearing them were also obviously haute couture clients. So I'm hoping that you could speak to some of the fashion designers you've mentioned, Chanel already, who helped to popularize pajamas and beach pajamas specifically, and I say popularized, because they didn't, as you. As you said, they didn't invent this idea, but they did help spread it.
- [23:52]
Janine Dagati
Well, I think in terms of beach pajamas specifically, probably the most prominent designers would be Coco Chanel, Edward Molyneux and Mary Nowitzki.
- [24:06]
Hannah Schiff
Yeah. Chanel was especially influential. She had been creating innovative resort wear since the 1910s. She actually sold men's sleeping pajamas to women in 1918 for Paris Air raids. And there's this widespread belief that Chanel herself invented beach pajamas. We feel that's up for debate. But she definitely help popular popularize them early on, both by designing and wearing them.
- [24:34]
April Callaghan
Yeah, well, I mean, she was in Deauville as early as 1914, so that made perfect sense.
- [24:39]
Janine Dagati
Yeah. And Molyneux was another one of the first major designers to feature pajama fashions presented specifically as outdoor wear. So his 1924 collection featured 15 pajama ensembles.
- [24:53]
April Callaghan
Oh, wow.
- [24:54]
Janine Dagati
A lot of those were presented by models walking with parasols or like these wooden walking sticks similar to those that were used on the beach at Deauville at the time. And I think that the use of those context clues to impart a new interpretation of a garment that up to that point had been seen strictly as indoor wear was so clever. And his collection really encouraged women to envision pajama garments and bifurcated dress as garments that could be worn outdoors in a public setting when the idea was still really new. And last but not least, our favorite is Mary Nowitzki. And we both became pretty obsessed with her when we were writing the book. She's not really well remembered today.
- [25:38]
April Callaghan
I had no idea who this person was. I mean, I learned a ton from your book. But this was one of the really interesting things. I was like, ooh, I want to poke around in the.
- [25:46]
Janine Dagati
Hardly anything has been written about her. She was so influential in terms of bifurcated women's fashions in the interwar era. She was specializing in pajama fashion, specifically and sportswear starting around 1924. And I just don't think that other designers of the period were creating as many trousered fashions for women as she was that early. And she really made it her focus.
- [26:09]
April Callaghan
Where was she located?
- [26:10]
Hannah Schiff
She was in France.
- [26:11]
Janine Dagati
She was in France with a Russian emigre.
- [26:13]
Hannah Schiff
Yeah, she was.
- [26:15]
Janine Dagati
She was based in France with her couture house.
- [26:17]
Hannah Schiff
Yeah. And she actually, her background is that she had been a Russian princess who then went into exile and basically became like a nanny and raised enough money to open her own couture house. So she was sort of uniquely well positioned because she was familiar with society types. She knew how to float in the world of the couturier clientele. But she also had this in between period where she became a little bit more in touch with the needs of, like, the everyday working woman and how that would impact clothing. So she really loved a bifurcated moment. I think she understood firsthand just how how influential that was in navigating the world in comfort.
- [26:57]
April Callaghan
I mean, this sounds like somebody's master thesis or a PhD dissertation or a book in the works.
- [27:06]
Podcast Host (possibly Cassidy Zachary)
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- [29:42]
April Callaghan
We haven't really talked about what this beach pajama esthetic was. It's very specific. So how would you describe it and what are some of the other types of materials that were being used besides some of the few that you've already mentioned?
- [29:58]
Hannah Schiff
Yeah, this is going to sound contradictory, but I feel like beach pajama aesthetics are at once incredibly specific and then shockingly broad because they were in style from essentially the beginning of the 20s into the end of the 30s and a lot changed in that window of time. So you know, early on you do see a lot of these Asian styles and then things really start transitioning you get overalls and jumpsuits and mix and match separates. You get, you know, everything from pongee silk to sailor suits and pirate ensembles. And material wise, there is just an endless availability. The fiber contents were largely limited to the popular fibers of the day. So you're seeing most pajamas in cotton, linen, rayon, silk, and occasionally wool. But in terms of textile type, there's almost no limitation. Everything from, uh, there. There was one ad in Vogue that mentioned, I think it was like sea green and silver lame pajamas that were intended not just for beach wear, but they said they were waterproof. And then, you know, you have denim, you have canvas, you have these really durable materials. On the flip side. So it is sort of interesting how there is like a, a unique aesthetic to beach pajamas, but within that aesthetic there's really endless variety.
- [31:16]
April Callaghan
Yeah. And I must be said that we're not just talking about the pants in terms of being bifurcated. Oftentimes these were sets. Right. So you would have the pants, you would have maybe a little sleeveless blouse or a full blouse, and there's a jacket that goes with it. Some of these are so beautiful. And you guys did so much image research. I actually snapped a few photos and sent them to friends and I was like, caftans are over, beach pajamas are in.
- [31:42]
Janine Dagati
There's so many images, there's so many exciting images that exist that haven't been published. So we're so happy to, to include those. Yeah.
- [31:51]
April Callaghan
And. And one of the other really interesting things I learned in the book is that once this vogue for beach pajamas really took hold at a lot of these very elite seaside resorts and around the world, it must be said, how they were worn oftentimes varied by location. But would you tell us a little bit about this and then maybe even take that one step further in terms of these materials that we were just speaking about and how widely they varied, because the materials that were preferenced seem to be by location as well.
- [32:22]
Janine Dagati
Sometimes it was a combination of location and time period. And we kind of split the book between two different time periods. And we start with 1918 to 1927. And that was a time period when pajamas were typically, you know, three piece sets. They were silk. They were more associated with the look of sleeping and lounging pajamas at the time. And the most prominent resort during that period was the Lido. And a lot of the press of the mid-20s attributed the origin of the beach pajama fad to the Italian Lido, which wasn't accurate, as we've said, but it was One of the most visible early resorts where beach pajamas were worn and it was even referred to as pajama land in the press omnipresent the trend was there. And Lolito had this reputation of being a mysterious, exotic locale in vogue. For example, described it in terms like alluring and languorous, magical. A place with a potent sorcery. Love that it just had an air of being this decadent, enigmatic fantasy land. And a lot of the pajama styles that were worn during its heyday in the early to mid-20s feature these bright, florid colored silks and satins. Asian inspired designs like Chinese embroidered pajamas, and styles that took influence from those sensational performances of the Ballets Russes, for example, in Orientalist art.
- [33:53]
Hannah Schiff
And at this time when the Lido was sort of in favor as the premier resort destination, the media often used this term, Lido pajama, in place of beach pajama. And it was this catch all term that technically could be applied to any pajamas worn on the beach at the time. But it often referred to this style that was very popular at the Lido, with very tight fitted calves, usually with like little decorative buttons down the side. So that was the earlier pajama aesthetic. Lots of silk, lots of exoticism.
- [34:25]
April Callaghan
And of course it must be said that women could wear these over their bathing suits, which were below. Right. These oftentimes they served as a beach cover up. But also more than that, it again we wandering into those liminal spaces.
- [34:40]
Hannah Schiff
Yeah, I think early on it, it sort of starts as this beach cover up for the new style of swimsuit. It's something that helps prevent sunburn. It's something that keeps you warm in, you know, cooler winter beach climates. But then over time there's definitely this transition as beach pajamas become more accepted and it's less of a garment that has a specific functional need and more of an established fashionable trend. And we start to see that when we shift into this French Riviera era of pajama dressing, which is kind of our second half of the book. And it the Riviera replaced the Lido. It was like this capital of pajama land. It became the next destination for all these wealthy resort goers to really popularize. And the atmosphere of the lifestyle there was completely different. It was just these beautiful days spent yachting. Everything was unplanned. It was drives along the coast to these tiny little, you know, seaside towns and then gambling at three in the morning. It was a very, very informal laissez faire kind of energy. And a more bump and tumble, day to day existence. And that's when beach pajamas sort of transition. You see more nautical influences. You see lots of mix and match separates, durable materials, cotton, linen, denim. Um, so yeah, there's, there's definitely a, a big shift there.
- [36:00]
April Callaghan
Well, and, and speaking of shifts, we even see shifts in silhouettes within the beach pajamas themselves. Our regular listeners will know that I love a good jumpsuit. And one of the most delightful parts of your book is the beach pajama jumpsuits that we begin to see. And Janine, so many of these beach pajamas that are featured in the book are actually from your own collection. So would you tell us a little bit about the process of acquiring this amazing representation of beach pajamas, which you've been doing now for more than a decade. They mainly date from the 1920s and the 1930s.
- [36:34]
Janine Dagati
Well, yeah, like I said, through my work, I've been buying them, I guess for the last 12 years. I think I found my first pair in 2012. It was like it was at this little antique store that doesn't exist anymore, kind of near here, actually, which is not where I lived at the time. It was called Serendipity Antiques. And I found two pongee silk jumpsuits hanging in an antique shop. They were both a dollar each. I took.
- [37:03]
April Callaghan
I think my heart rate just went up.
- [37:06]
Janine Dagati
That hasn't happened since. I just kept collecting them after that. I just thought they were so interesting. They were the oldest pants that I'd owned up to that point. And then when we started working on the book, I just really feel that as a clothing dealer, you just see so many remarkable garments that pass through the secondhand market. They're interesting, they have a story to tell and they're worthy of study. And I wanted to include as many non museum examples as we could. These were pieces that hadn't already been published for study, items in private collections that we photographed for the book. And I just think that the vintage clothing market is kind of like a underappreciated resource in terms of academic fashion study. Because whereas museums typically focus on designer pieces and items that were worn and collected by the wealthy. And of course those items are important. But I also wanted to show a lot of pieces that were mass produced, homemade and worn by regular people. And then I was also collecting other pieces that spanned medium and usage that weren't clothing, just to give a broader picture of how beach pajamas were viewed and how they were used commercially. So, for example, we had like a jigsaw puzzle in there and A belt buckle with beach pajama girls on it, dinner menus and event programs from various resorts. You know, invitations, paintings, anonymous photos, homemade paper dolls. And I think that seeing all those things together imparts a bigger picture of how beach pajamas functioned within the culture beyond just as wearable clothing, and how pervasive they became in the public consciousness of the day.
- [38:47]
April Callaghan
Yeah, and this is something, as you guys know, I was a curator in Special Collections for many, many years, and this is something that the curators in the museum and I would talk about quite a lot because they would come in to do this other contextual research that situated the garment that they had at the museum. But Special Collections had all the other materials that provided the social context to it. So I think once you compare those two things together, you're getting a more complete understanding of what that garment meant at that time and how it was worn. You know, I think another thing that really gave rise to at least the popularity of beach pajamas to the masses has to be fashion photography of this era. And there are so, so many amazing images of not just the pajama ensembles in your book, but images of women engaging in all types of sports as they begin to appear in fashion magazines. So could one of you, maybe or both of you speak to the role of fashion photography and in the context of the rise of sportswear, as it starts to become this standalone category of dress?
- [39:58]
Hannah Schiff
Yeah, so this is something that particularly fascinates me. I love found photos. I love photography in general. And the rapid advancements in photo technology around the turn of the century were such a game changer for the fashion industry in general, from a design standpoint, from a just visually disseminating style standpoint. And so, you know, at this time in the. In the 20s, especially into the 1930s, you start seeing cameras moving outside of the traditional photo studio environment, and you get cameras that can actually capture models in motion. So that's where speaking to the. These active images in the book of women kicking a ball in their beach pajamas or using a tennis racket in their pajamas and seeing them in motion, it's presenting the general public with a whole new approach to clothing. It's no longer this static thing that you're just stuck in, standing there primly or sitting. You know, you can now move and engage. So I think fashion photography kind of helped teach people about sportswear and show them how it could apply to their lives.
- [41:05]
Janine Dagati
Clothing for living in as opposed to just for display.
- [41:08]
Hannah Schiff
Exactly right.
- [41:10]
Janine Dagati
Being on display.
- [41:11]
April Callaghan
And another. Another key piece of that is this Is the moment, too, when women stopped wearing corsets or some women stopped wearing corsets. So all of these things, all of these factors are, like, in the mix, really?
- [41:23]
Hannah Schiff
Yeah, it, it, honestly, it took this really rare confluence of elements, all of these historical precedents, all, you know, it was like the right moment for all of this to happen. And it, it does make you wonder, if somebody had tried wearing pajamas on a beach even a decade earlier, would the climate have been right, Would the conditions have been right for that government to ultimately succeed?
- [41:46]
April Callaghan
Well, and this very kind of curious occurrence starts to happen in the fashion press in the 1930s. We start to see press use the term slacks instead of pajamas. And I think that this, in conjunction with the appearance of more and more sportswear in the fashion magazines, speaks very broadly to this widespread acceptance that people start to have when they're adopting it into their everyday wardrobes, not necessarily special sporting occasion wardrobes. Do you guys have any thoughts on this? And, and, and maybe what made this important moment happen attributed to it?
- [42:24]
Janine Dagati
The terminology is so interesting and evolved so much from the late 1910s through the 30s, not just in terms of slacks and trousers, but just there's very little difference throughout the early 1920s between beach pajamas and indoor sleeping and lounge pajamas. Because the term could refer to those exact pajamas if they were just worn on the beach. And the press would say, oh, these are beach pajamas. No one knew what to call them. And as more pajama styles were designed especially for beach wear, for outdoor wear, particularly into the late 20s and early 30s, the designs started to show innovations in fit, style, and material that reflected the specific needs of an increasingly public and active female consumer base. And that included typically masculine and sporty styles that really wouldn't have been called pajamas and shouldn't, like denim overalls were sold as beach pajamas.
- [43:17]
April Callaghan
I just didn't know what else to call them. It was so novel at the time.
- [43:21]
Janine Dagati
These are increased slack suit would be yachting pajamas. So all these disparate styles were presented to the public under the pajama moniker, which essentially functioned as a feminine, euphemistic umbrella term for. For any women's pants at the time. So interestingly, by the later 30s, you see a shift in the terminology in the media, and these bifurcated styles that had previously would have been called pajamas a decade earlier started to be called just slacks and trousers. And it was right after beach pajamas hit peak popularity around the 20s and 30s, and the vernacular started to shift. So beach pajamas all but disappeared from fashionable vernacular by the 40s. But a lot of those styles that had first become pop beach pajamas were still being worn. They were just called something different. And there. There's a historian named Anne Marie Strassel, who we quote in the book, who argues that the term dress reform disappeared from common parlance at the very moment when the goals of that movement became what she called naturalized, meaning they moved from the marginal to mainstream culture. And that's exactly what happened with the terminology surrounding beach pajamas. They weren't mentioned in the press very much after the mid-30s, but that's not because they ceased to be relevant. It's because they'd become so normalized by that point that they were able to transcend these marginal categories of beach wear, sleepwear, feminized terminology like pajamas, and they just entered a new terminology of casual sportswear. It's just what's so interesting about the beach pajama era is it is this fascinating bubble in time when you can watch women's pants move from something peripheral to something more mainstream.
- [45:05]
Hannah Schiff
Yeah, pajamas were always fundamentally pants for women, but first they needed to be repackaged as something more familiar and more feminine and less threatening.
- [45:17]
Plan B Advertisement Voice
Yeah.
- [45:17]
April Callaghan
One of the last sections of your book is actually a beginning. It's not the end. One of the last sections of book is entitled the Beginnings of American Sportswear. So that's where this story picks up. Right. You know, beach pajamas trend really blossomed in Europe at first. There were these playsuits and modular separates, and these concepts of modular separates and playsuits is now often so much identified with American designers like Claire McCardell or Tina Lisa or Caroline Schnur. But I'm hoping that you could maybe sum up this bigger, broader legacy of pajamas and beach pajamas in terms of not just what it meant to the development of American Sportswear in the 1940s, but what it really means in the context of how we all dress today.
- [46:04]
Janine Dagati
They were. Beach pajamas were so innovative in their blending of fashion with function. It was such a new concept at the time. They incorporated design elements like wrap closures and lacing that allowed for an adjustable fit and functional elements like pockets and the usage of unfussy, washable fabrics that were typically used in menswear and not used in couture.
- [46:27]
April Callaghan
I mean, you could be describing the work of Claire McCardell right now, as we say.
- [46:30]
Janine Dagati
Exactly. There is an emphasis on effortlessness, versatility, wearability in beach pajama design. Those were the styles that were the most chic. And those are the same things you think of when you think of mid century American look designs. And beach pajamas were also, like you said, from the beginning, it was a category of separates. And since the early twenties with the pants, the pants were often worn with varying tops or just with a swimsuit. And through that, they implicitly encouraged individuality and a self expression in dress as well as a forward thinking, modular approach to fashion that became so associated with American mid century dress and sportswear and is still the basis of casual dress today.
- [47:10]
Hannah Schiff
And I, I think it's so interesting to consider the legacy of beach pajamas and how they help shape western contemporary dress, because, I mean, if anything, we're living in more of a pajama age than ever. It's, everybody's out, okay, time to run to the drugstore, grab a gallon of milk in your pajamas. You know, working from home. Zoom professional button down shirt on top, pajamas on the bottom. And specific pajama silhouettes infiltrated fashion and never went away. Bell bottoms of the 1960s and 70s, that's just flare leg beach pajamas, halter tops, sailor pants, these are all things that have never really fallen out of fashion. But they first entered fashion as beach pajama separates. Even, even these specific elements, like Janine talking about wrap styles, that's incorporated into a diamond Furstenberg wrap dress, beach pajama separates, to me, that's just a juicy couture tracksuit, never really gone away. And so it's really fascinating how pajamas themselves, they haven't just been repackaged into various forms of casual day wear, but we even see them in fashionable dresses. A really topical example is the recent Met Gala. The theme for the red carpet was promoted as the garden of Time, but the exhibit itself is called Sleeping Beauties Reawaking Fashion. And so many of the attendees did wear pajama ensembles on the Met Gala red carpet, including one that I really liked from Sofia Coppola. That was this beautiful shimmery satin, silver satin set. So I think it's safe to say that pajamas kind of broke out of the private sphere and became one of the most influential modern garments.
- [48:55]
April Callaghan
Yeah, absolutely. And we cannot underscore that enough. And that is the big takeaway of your book. And that's why I was so excited when I was reading it. I was like, this is groundbreaking new research. Why is, why have we even not been talking about this the entire time?
- [49:11]
Janine Dagati
Thank you.
- [49:12]
Hannah Schiff
It's honestly nice to hear somebody else say that because I feel like we've spent the last close to 10 years saying that to each other. And it's, it's turned into an echo chamber. So I'm glad the research is impactful that people can get something out of this.
- [49:26]
April Callaghan
Yes, yes, yes. Well, thank you for the book. Thank you for joining us today, dress listeners. We will of course put it on our dressed bookshelf and provide a link to it in our show notes. But ladies, thank you so much for joining us and do either of you have any final thoughts?
- [49:41]
Hannah Schiff
Just thank you so much for having us.
- [49:43]
Janine Dagati
Thank you.
- [49:44]
Podcast Host (possibly Cassidy Zachary or co-host)
Hannah, Janine, thank you so much for sharing your fascinating research with us all. Listeners, if you enjoyed this episode, we promise you you are going to want to get your hands on this book which is packed with amazing images. And you will find a link to purchase Janine and Hannah's book in our show notes and also on our dress bookshelf@bookshop.org shop forward/dressed and April, as you know, I've actually been following Janine's vintage business, Squaremont's Vintage, for many, many years now. I'm always in awe at the mini extension. Exceptionally rare and I'm talking super, super rare and super high quality vintage pieces she has in her online store mostly which are early 20th century, so like 1920s, 1930s. And her store currently includes some spectacular examples of of course, beach pajamas. So we'll put a link to her store in the show notes so our listeners can check them out for themselves as well as her many, many other treasures.
- [50:40]
April Callaghan
Yes, and every time I see Janine, I tell her I don't know where you find all these amazing things. And when her and Hannah started coming into FIT to do research all those many years ago, I was very interested to see where this project went. And I said at the beginning of the episode, I've been like just waiting for the book to come out so we could have them on the show. And trust me, dress listeners, it does not disappoint. This is really interesting new research and kind of fills in a puzzle piece of some missing pieces when it comes to the development of pants and sportswear that no one had ever really truly considered in this way before. So if you're a fashion historian especially, you're going to want to get your hands on this book. I think that does it for us. As weak dressed listeners, may you consider how you will style yourself for soaking up the sun next time you get dressed. As always, we love hearing from you. So if you'd like to write to us, you can do so by emailing us@hello, dressdale history.com dressedhistory.com is of course our website where you can keep a breast of all of our latest offerings of classes, trips and tours.
- [51:45]
Podcast Host (possibly Cassidy Zachary or co-host)
And of course dress listeners.
- [51:46]
Podcast Host (possibly Cassidy Zachary)
You can always reach out to us by DM on Instagram Dressed Podcast, which is where we will post lots of
- [51:52]
Podcast Host (possibly Cassidy Zachary or co-host)
fun beach pajama imagery this week.
- [51:54]
Podcast Host (possibly Cassidy Zachary)
If you'd like to search for the content specifically related to this episode, you can do so by searching the hashtag dress370. That's dressed 370 and do you love Dressed but want to skip the ads? You can now sign up for Ad free listening with any tier on our Dressed History Patreon.
- [52:11]
April Callaghan
We are also excited to now be part of the Airwave Network and their premium ad free history subscription Airwave History plus available on Apple Podcasts. The subscription brings dress and also 27 other popular history podcasts ad free for just $5.99 per month. More information on Patreon and Airwave is available at the link in our bio.
- [52:34]
Podcast Host (possibly Cassidy Zachary)
Thank you as always for tuning in and more Dressed coming your way very soon. The History of Fashion is a production of Dressed media.
- [52:47]
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- [53:13]
Nick Robinson
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