The shapeless sleepwear tents — often accentuated with ruffles, quaint embroidery and homespun floral prints — are now considered by some as “perfect dresses waiting to be worn,” appreciated for their comfort and thoughtful details.
Nightie fever is catching on among creative types who are uninhibited by corporate dress codes. They are sourcing vintage gowns on Etsy and in flea markets, pairing them with sandals, sneakers and pastel hair clips for an au courant pastoral look — as if the Vermont Country Store had spurred a revival with a Brooklyn outpost.
While summer was once seen as the season to bare all, a celebratory moment to shed winter’s layers and reveal an unobstructed silhouette — the post #MeToo era has heralded a new modesty in some quarters of women’s fashion. Last summer saw the rise of prairie dress styles — knee-length frocks erring on the side of Laura Ingalls Wilder cosplay. Nightgowns — only marginally less cartoonish and seen as the prairie dress’ second coming — are quickly landing in notable closets.
Last month, 2019 Whitney Biennial artist Maia Ruth Lee wore a silk magenta long-sleeved nightgown by Maryam Nassir Zadeh to a benefit for her youth education foundation, Wide Rainbow. Gwyneth Paltrow — Hollywood’s priestess of higher living — appeared at this year’s Met Ball in a Chloé light yellow dress that was derided by tabloids for its likeness to sleepwear. Lena Dunham recently pledged nightgown allegiance in an updated Instagram bio, while Katie Holmes attended the American Ballet Theatre spring gala in a wallpaper print and bib-collar nightie-like dress designed by Jane Mayle.
The prairie dress had been criticized for its restricting cuts that were thought to exclude many body types. Nighties, fashion’s equivalent of a frilly yurt, “compliment many different bodies,” Matchesfashion’s head of women’s wear Cassie Smart said of the free-flowing styles, which are seeing high sell-through rates on the site. “Women’s lifestyles today are so busy, we all want to get up and go traveling 90 miles an hour while looking polished. [These dresses] offer a strong style and aesthetic while being really comfortable,” she said.
Illustrator and recent nightie convert Joana Avillez chimed in of their merits: “The fabrics chosen for nightgowns are much softer. The clothing you buy is never that soft and cozy and comforting.”
On Ludlow Street, the racks inside Nikki Chasin’s namesake store are lined in nightgown dresses that leave little skin exposed — each cut from colorful, whisper-thin fabric. She is attracted to how their fluid shapes allow for greater mobility and align with the post-#MeToo concept of dressing for one’s self. “Being covered, you are able to adorn yourself in things you like. Things that make you feel pretty rather than showing the shape of your body to feel pretty. It’s almost a ‘f–k you’ to suits and business-casual dressing. I’m going to go about my day and accomplish things and be as comfortable as I am in a nightgown.’”
“I have always felt like wearing tight-fitting clothes. I like to wear stuff that cinches at my waist, but lately I don’t want anything clinging to me, I want something loose,” concurred Avillez, who scours Etsy for late-19th-century nightgowns embroidered with initials that match her own.
Boasting a collection of some 20 nighties, Leigh Plessner, creative director of Brooklyn-based jeweler Catbird, considers the house dresses “a little bit of an antidote to ath-leisure — it’s fully leisure,” wearing them about five out of seven days of the week. “People often think it’s a dress,” she said. “Maybe because of what I pair them with, I like to ground it with some black accessory or black bra. I wear with a pointy-toe black flat for a sharp line and then all of my jewelry.”
“The trick is to wear a slip under the ones that are more sheer,” Plessner added. “It’s long-sleeved, it’s tissue-thin so you have the best of both worlds. Sometimes it’s nice on a hot pavement to be more covered up and not have that steam all over us.”
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