For some reason, I have really had a hankering for a new night gown.
While my normal sleepwear would belie this fact, I am pretty picky about pajamas. I usually sleep in some form of pant – sweatpants, track pants, yoga pants or capris – depending on what the temperature dictates. On top it’s a t-shirt or cami. Ironically, all of my sleepwear would actually be found in the “active” wear department of any department store.
What I’d really like is something pretty and comfortable that I could wear on vacation or on a visit to my parent’s house, something that wouldn’t be grossly unflattering or immodest or pathetic (the category in which I am most likely to find myself).
My dear family got me a new robe for Christmas this year because they were sure I was desperate for one. I wasn’t, but I’m pretty sure they were desperate to not see me in my dingy off-white, hair color and coffee stained shameful disgrace of a bath robe any longer. The new robe is super plush, baby blue, full length, zip up the front, high collar. It is warm and cozy – pretty dreamy, in fact – but I look…I look like…well - if Pillow Pets made a monk model – that’s pretty much what I look like. So any visions of me sitting on my ocean front deck with coffee and a good book and the wind in my hair looking like this:
Are just ridiculous.
But that’s what I aspire to, so I am hunting for a new night gown in a category known as “loungewear”. I find loungewear an alien concept because I rarely lounge, but I really, really want to. So perhaps the answer is to get out of the active wear department for my loungewear. I still have some challenges to overcome - two specifically: my breasts.
The girls are big and boisterous and require some taming. I don’t like to sleep in a bra, so whatever I wear has to have enough coverage so as not to be obscene or endanger a passerby. When I was in Liberia and knew I’d be living communally with my fellow travelers, I did buy a sleep bra because it was just too stinkin’ hot to sleep in much more, but this isn’t the ideal for me.
Most of the cute night gowns seem to have either empire or surplice styling like this, this or this. My unfettered bosom is a little, uh, low for these styles to be manageable. (Hey, what can I say? I am a woman of a certain age who has birthed and breastfed three babies. It just is what it is.) The alternative is usually something like this
that skims the bust – and everything else. I’m sorry, but this style just says, “Screw it, I give up!” But
I don’t give up. Not yet, anyway. And when I do find a cut that I think will work, the fabric is often too clingy and/or flimsy to comfortably go braless. Oh, and I don’t do pastels. Ever.
So the hunt is on. I’ve come across a couple possibilities: This is cute and could probably camouflage the girls, but I’d need a whole lot more camouflage downstairs than a G-string. This looks comfy and the price is right, but I don’t love the color. This looks promising, but she is strangely elongated. I fear the Photoshop hijinks may be giving me a false impression of how this will look on my distinctly not elongated, non-model figure.
I’m thinking I need to put my friend Jen on the job. She’s particularly good at scouring the interwebs for these sorts of things. Or I’ll have to design it and make it myself. Necessity is a mother.
