I’m mostly wearing yoga pants or leggings with black tops and scarves or even a suit jacket over top for weekdays. I swap the suit jacket for a hoodie for dog walking. I swapped out my summer clothes for my winter wardrobe last weekend. Bye bye sundresses! You’re in the basement box for out of season clothing now.
My winter work clothes are more formal. And I’m not wearing dry clean only clothes around the house. Here’s looking at you, Cheddar! So lots of them got put away too.
My summer dresses are pretty comfy. I even bought a lovely nap dress in keeping with pandemic fashion trends. Lol. It was easier in the summer months wearing clothes that did double duty as both work and work from home clothes. I don’t think I’ll buy a winter nap dress (see above, middle image). They need leggings underneath to be warm enough and why not just wear leggings. Also, they don’t look that practical for midday kettle bell swings, TRX-ing, or Yoga With Adriene.
My newsfeed now is full of ads for soft, comfortable clothes: ethically made in Canada bamboo PJs, cashmere jogging suits, and things called nap shirts. Lately I’ve been seeing ads for enormous fleece lined hoodies. These look perfect for when I am working in the back room and Sarah’s riding her bike on Zwift with the porch door open to the outside and the fan on high. I confess I’m a big fan of fresh air and leaving the door open for dogs. That means my house isn’t toasty warm. The giant hoodies come in family packs. What do you think kids?
I know, I know, all dresses can be nap dresses. You can also nap in just about anything. I’m sure I’ve done it. I’ve regularly napped at work through the years since I often have to stay on campus (back in normal times) for evening events.
But now we are in pandemic times and I’m still working at home, working out at home, and napping at home. I’m starting to make clothing choices that make sense for not much leaving the house.
The nap dress is one answer to what to wear when working at home and napping, because (in my case) very long workdays, inconsistent sleep due to nightmares and pandemic anxiety, and late evening bike races.
Besides, they’re summer dresses and they’re on sale, so I bought one.
“Since sleeping through the night was not happening, I figured an outfit specifically designated for daytime dozing might be just the thing. One could theoretically wear a Nap Dress to bed, but it is decidedly not a nightgown. (For one, it is opaque enough to wear to the grocery store.) It is not the same thing as a caftan, which, though often luxurious, is more shapeless and more grown-up. It is not a housedress, which we tend to associate with older women shuffling onto the stoop to grab the morning paper, the curlers still in their hair. A housedress is about forgetting the self, or at least hiding it under layers of quilted fabric. The Nap Dress, on the other hand, suggests a cheeky indulgence for one’s body, and a childlike return to waking up bleary-eyed hours before dinner.”
Or for more a critical analysis of the trend, read The Uneasy Privilege Of The Daytime Nightgown in which Veronique Hyland talks about the politics of who gets to wear a daytime nap dress during the pandemic. It’s not frontline workers, grocery store clerks, transit workers, and people driving UberEats to pay rent. I used to teach about fashion and I confess if I were teaching about fashion this semester I might give a lecture on pandemic fashion and the nap dress.
I don’t need to know if you don’t like it. I do! Also, yes, I know white is impractical.
The ads in my digital media news feeds know what I’m up to. Which is to say staying at home, working from home, exercising at home, spending time with family, and napping. I’m also dressing differently now my life is one big blur of working, exercising, doomscrolling, eating, sleeping etc.
Enter the nap dress. I swear ads for different versions of this dress make up half of the advertising I see these days.
And that makes sense given that I’ve declared myself the Pandemic Nap Queen.
Rachel Syme writes, “Since sleeping through the night was not happening, I figured an outfit specifically designated for daytime dozing might be just the thing. One could theoretically wear a Nap Dress to bed, but it is decidedly not a nightgown. (For one, it is opaque enough to wear to the grocery store.) It is not the same thing as a caftan, which, though often luxurious, is more shapeless and more grown-up. It is not a housedress, which we tend to associate with older women shuffling onto the stoop to grab the morning paper, the curlers still in their hair. A housedress is about forgetting the self, or at least hiding it under layers of quilted fabric. The Nap Dress, on the other hand, suggests a cheeky indulgence for one’s body, and a childlike return to waking up bleary-eyed hours before dinner.”
In “The Uneasy Privilege Of The Daytime Nightgown,” Veronique Hyland talks about the politics of who gets to wear a daytime nap dress during the pandemic. It’s not frontline workers, grocery store clerks, transit workers, and people driving UberEats to pay rent.
“I can appreciate the aesthetic appeal of a nightgown. I get that they’re comfortable, and who doesn’t crave comfort right now? It’s possible that I’m projecting way too much onto a few yards of fabric. But the nightgown, especially as daywear, strikes me as reactionary. Its evocations of passive Victorian and pre-Raphaelite femininity feel like an uncritical throwback to those eras’ mold of white female fragility. The styling of these images evokes sleeping beauties or Ophelias, or worse, invalids. Fashioning yourself as a tubercular Victorian might once have felt ironic; with millions in the grip of a real pandemic—one that is disproportionately affecting Black and brown communities—it feels Marie Antoinette-at-the-Hameau-level out of touch. And in 2020, the idea of “checking out” and into the seductive world of blameless slumber that the nightgown invites us to, does too. It serves as a reminder that while some people are taking to the streets, others are taking to their beds.”
This is speedy, short post, quickly written before I zoom away for holidays where there will definitely be lots and lots of napping but also definitely not any special nap dresses!
See you when I’m back after a week of canoe camping in Algonquin Park.
