Angela Mollard: Why I’d be in on wearing bedwear as outer wear

If the pyjama party is heading outside, Angela Mollard would LOVE to wear them in the street, to slide from bed to cafe to gym in hot chocolate-stained cotton and clumpy Ugg boots.

The first time I spotted a young woman with a curious new affliction I thought she must be sick.

A 20-something in crumpled flannel pyjamas wandering the supermarket aisles as though she’d struggled from her feverish bed just long enough to buy Panadol and a reviving bottle of freshly squeezed orange juice. Poor thing, I thought. She has the flu and likely lives alone. I wonder if she’d like some help.

But then I saw another one. This time perfectly healthy, skin gleaming, walking with her dog and ordering a flat white at a beachside café. She, too, was wearing pyjamas. Not in a harried mum taking her kids to school with a bit of brushed cotton poking out from her coat look, but an utterly shameless execution of bedwear as outer wear. Granted, she had managed to put on sneakers, but if the rest of us can be bothered making an effort …

And then a third. Another young woman walking down the street in pyjamas printed with dogs. I checked my privilege. Perhaps she couldn’t afford clothes. But then I noticed the air pods fixed in her ears and the gel nails. I got the huff.

An utterly shameless execution of bedwear as outer wear. Picture: Christian Vierig/Getty Images

Not a Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada sort of huff. No, my huff was pure jealousy. Because if the pyjama party is heading outside, I want in. I would LOVE to wear pyjamas in the street, to slide from bed to cafe to gym in a cosy muddle of hot chocolate-stained cotton and clumpy Ugg boots, but I would not look cute like the girls I can’t stop seeing; I would look deranged.

After a lifetime of sleeping nude, I have come late to pyjamas and the decision to embrace what I now know to be fashion’s greatest invention, a cuddle in cotton form, has been torturous.

Pyjama-clad Diane Keaton in Something's Gotta Give.

Until recently I liked the feel of skin on clean sheets. It felt simple. French. Sexy. No one in the movies ever wears pyjamas except Meryl Streep in It’s Complicated and Diane Keaton in Something’s Gotta Give. The subtext: middle-aged woman gives up.

There were also grim warnings from “experts”. Pyjamas would not only kill off my sex life but my partner would turn up his nose in disgust and dump me for a younger model. While this would clearly be his loss, relationship expert Channa Bromley, from Costa Rica where presumably it’s too hot to ever require winceyette, painted pyjamas as the death knell.

“Comfort kills urgency,” she warned gravely. “Your pyjamas are not just nightwear. They are a signal. When someone trades in seduction for a fleece onesie, they are not prioritising attraction. They are prioritising ease. That shift, subtle as it seems, seeps into every part of a relationship.”

While you could argue that there’s nothing more intimacy eroding than having your core temperature plummet and your extremities turn blue, I held off. Even from afar I could see that pyjamas were a slippery slope. One minute you’re a fiend with a hair curler, blush and excellent eyebrows, and the next you look like a crackhead on day release.

The feel of skin on clean sheets felt simple, French and sexy – but then I found pyjamas are wonder wear. Picture: Veronique Durruty/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

But then I found myself in the centre aisle in Aldi where a pair of pale blue pyjamas edged with chic white piping caught my attention. At $29.99 it wouldn’t kill me if I only wore them once.

Turns out pyjamas are wonder wear. Pulling them on each evening is like being in a consensual relationship with a marshmallow. This is not bargain-bin attire but soft-legged sorcery. If they could speak they would be that sigh you utter as you sink into an armchair. Yes, after a lifetime of declaring pyjamas ugly, weird and the ultimate passion killer I find myself in a deep and abiding relationship with brushed cotton.

I now know why those girls are in the street in their bedwear. Because after you’ve communed with head-to-toe flannel and an elasticated waist, it’s a game over for belts. I now look at jeans as I might my tax return, as something unnecessarily cruel and, frankly, a bit rude. Pyjamas make you love everybody and everything. Honestly, if Trump, Netanyahu, Putin, Xi and Kim Jong-un sat down for pyjama-wearing talks they’d pull off world peace before bedtime.

As for my bloke? He’s a Queenslander. He feels the cold with the bleak intensity of someone who has just lost the State of Origin decider. The poor chap has the gas heater on from breakfast to midnight and shuffles round on the couch like a rotisserie chicken trying to heat his various sides. He’s always been a nude sleeper but when I offered to buy him pyjamas he warned he’d likely never take them off. This I believe; the man has to be crowbarred out of his Uggs.

Anyway, this week, still fearful that my PJs were signalling impending celibacy, I chanced on a genius solution. We bought an electric blanket. Now I wear my pyjamas until bed then slip between the sheets naked and toasty. Surely it’s time someone invented electric coats?

ANGE’S A-LIST

Horror Retold

Attack on London: Hunting the 7/7 Bombers (Netflix) is an extraordinary four-part series reconstructing the events in July 2005 that saw 52 people killed in the British capital. As someone who was visiting the UK at the time, I remember the horror and this series pairs sharp storytelling with excellent interviews.

Creamy Comfort

Rice pudding is the ultimate cheap eat and I’ve been making it for breakfast with stewed rhubarb, cinnamon and plump sultanas, adding yoghurt and walnuts for protein. RecipeTin Eats has a foolproof recipe.

Originally published as Angela Mollard: Why I’d be in on wearing bedwear as outer wear