Dinner Pajamas

Formal wear, informally

Dinner pajamas are said to have originated in 1920 by Parisian dancer Mlle Mistinguette, who reportedly appeared at dinner one evening wearing a creation of purple velvet with green and silver lace. The fad took at least 8 more years to catch on, and the earliest references in the press to "dinner pyjamas" (customary European and Canadian spelling; in America it's more often "pajamas"; I will use the spellings interchangeably because I can) are seen in the late 1920s, in reference to the most fashionable women and what they're wearing to the resorts. "It may be a long time before Americans don pyjamas instead of dresses," reported a Canadian newspaper in 1927. "But styles are set on the Lido. And facing the future it behooves every well-dressed woman to have at least one suit in her wardrobe to develop in her that nonchalance without which dinner pyjamas should never be attempted." They were somewhat off, however, and pyjamas began to be seen on Palm Beach and in New York for informal dinners by 1929. Here, an ad from my alma mater of sorts, Bullocks-Wilshire, from December 1929: