One woman discovers how our matriarchs got it right in the bedroom.
It’s a dark and rainy Saturday morning and the apartment is library-quiet. My teenagers are at their father’s place for the weekend. With no real pressure to do otherwise, I’ve made myself a cup of coffee and crawled back into bed wearing what I delightedly refer to as my “haunting gown.” I can’t imagine something more luxurious at the moment.
My haunting gown is a present I got for Christmas. I specifically asked for a long, white grandma nightie with sleeves; the kind you might envision a Victorian marm wearing as she carried her chamberstick candle from one room to another. Or, exactly what you could imagine wearing as a ghost when you come back from the dead to haunt your family.
I’ve never been a nightgown person. From childhood to my college years, I almost exclusively wore massive t-shirts painstakingly collected for their size, texture, and willingness to let me squeeze my knees up into them at the breakfast table. In college, I added pajama pants or boxers for decency as I padded around the dorm to our shared bathrooms. In my 20s and 30s I was monogamously coupled up. Those were the naked years. Once kids came along, I reverted back to my pajama pants and t-shirts regimen so I could propel myself out of bed at all ungodly hours to answer the cry of babies.
Some time in my early 40s, Target came out with adorably retro pajama sets in a fabric that felt silky without being slippery, jersey-soft without snagging on your skin. I thought they looked 1950s glam in black or navy with white piping. I own several pairs. If you don’t have them already, you won’t regret getting some. This is not an endorsement or affiliate link. I just think they’re great—but not to actually sleep in.
In the summer, I’d happily wear my Target set puttering around the apartment, but promptly peel them off to actually go to bed. I don’t want anything on my legs, and much more than a tank top in the heat and humidity felt oppressive. In the winter, it was a similar story: I’d change into a pants-and-long-sleeves version of these pjs and some time after I’d settled into bed and drifted off to sleep, I’d unconsciously disrobe when I got overheated. I’d reliably wake to a pile of pajamas next to my bed that I’d have to put back on when I got up. I wanted something better.
Last winter at a self-styled writers’ retreat in a cabin upstate New York, Jenny co-founder Megan joyfully showed off the Valentine’s Day present she’d just received from her husband: a floor-length, red and black checkered flannel nightgown from Land’s End. We laughed at the irony of receiving such a wildly unromantic, grandmotherly get-up instead of a sexy negligee or lacy thong. But as depressing as it may sound to some, she couldn’t have been happier. She’d been wearing lightweight floral or white granny nighties à la The Virgin Suicides all summer and fall but she needed a cozy winter version—and he took note.
It gave me flashbacks to the matching red nightgowns—with nightcaps!—my sister and I had as kids in the ’80s (which apparently you can still snag on eBay?). I can feel the elastic, too tight at my wrists, just looking at that picture.
I jotted ‘cozy nightgown’ down on the imaginary list of present ideas that I keep in my brain (because someone in my family always asks what I want and I never know what to say). When this past Christmas approached and the inevitable question came up, I actually had an answer. I looked around online once or twice with some search terms “grandma nightgown” and “Victorian nightie,” but when Google delivered results like this one, I felt instantly ancient. No offense intended to actual grannies, but I’m not there yet. Am I tiptoeing up to my over-the-hill years by the sheer fact that I suddenly want a granny nightie? Is this how it happens, inch by insidious inch? Or am I just a victim of trends that I didn’t even know were trends? It was hard to say.
After refining my search terms again and again, I finally landed on some granny nightgowns that looked kinda classy but hip (if that was possible): white cotton with the kind of detailing my actual grandmother used to smock onto dresses she made for us as little kids. I found some I liked at Eileen West and covertly shared my favorite with my ex-husband as he helped our daughter shop for presents. If he had any judgmental thoughts, he bit his tongue. My teenage daughter, 16 at the time, did not.
As Christmas approached, she said, “Father suggested something for you that he insisted you’d like, but… I don’t know.” (Yes, my children have taken to calling their parents Father and Mother. It started out as irony, and it has stuck. Maybe I deserve my granny nightie.) I assured her that her dad knows my taste pretty well, and my reaction when I opened her present was exuberant enough that it allayed any of her concerns that he had steered her in the wrong direction.
“Oh you like it? Good! That was the one I was worried Father was wrong about. It looks like a grandma,” she said with a hint of derision.
“I love it,” I gushed.
While my kid may be appalled at my nightwear choices, I’m convinced they’re a good move. Our generation has learned to ask the question, “Wait, why did we stop doing things the way our grandparents did?” more than any other generation. The farm-to-table movement has a chic moniker, but my Mom-Mom was growing her own food before it was trendy. We’ve learned that Boomers, who went full-bore on instant mashed potatoes and disposable everything, likely were wrong about a lot of things that their parents had right. While our moms opted for nylon sweat-inducing sets and flammable footie pajamas, our grandmas let themselves breathe in flowing nighties made of natural cotton—another point for our grandparents’ generation.
These nightgowns not only give your legs the freedom they crave, but they let your boobs take up all the real estate without needing to pop out the side for some air. Tank tops, j’accuse. The light cotton I chose is breathable, making it perfect for anyone who is a sweaty sleeper, or has entered their night sweats phase. I’ve yet to wake up naked with a pile next to my bed since wearing one. And when I do wake up, now I feel kinda fancy. Throw on a long cardigan and I’m downright literary. I am fully embracing my need to swan around my house in the early mornings, coffee clenched cozily up to my chest, in my haunting gown.
I imagine myself on these mornings in a slightly more magical place than the one in which I actually live. Maybe it’s a weathered cedar-shingle house right on the coast of Rhode Island, a salty breeze playing in the sheer curtains. It feels very Diane Keaton—paragon of the Coastal Grandmother style that the youth love so—to wear a nightie. I may be washing up the dishes that I was too tired to bother with the night before, or convincing a teenager that it is in fact a weekday and despite the rainy weather, they should get up for school. But in my haunting gown, I feel like an ethereal beach lady. Clothes are nothing if not manifestations of how we see ourselves or want to present ourselves to the world. And in this phase of my life… I am a vision.
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Lili Zarghami lives with her teenagers in Brooklyn. She’s been writing for and providing editorial direction at women’s websites like Redbook, HGTV, Better Homes & Gardens and more since the turn of the century. She can remember the addresses of all the places she was a latchkey kid but has no idea what her email password is.
