Shopping in nightwear… WHY???

Pink Dressing Gown
Pink Dressing Gown

What is it with people wearing nightwear to go out in public at the minute? Am I just an old person missing out on some new fangled young person’s fashion thing? I’m just not getting it.

I don’t even like to open the curtains if I’m in pyjamas, I don’t want the world seeing my nightwear – I think it’s not appropriate. Opening the door to the postman in just a T-Shirt and pyjama bottoms has me in palpitations for hours. So why oh why is it all of a sudden acceptable to go out in public dressed like this?

It’s gotten worse recently, but I think it started a couple of years ago with the “onesie” fashion fad. All of a sudden we’d see people in Asda wearing these pyjama suits. Of course, everybody was sniggering, and whispering at these odd people out shopping in their nightwear, but I will admit that I found some of the outfits to be quite cool (for wearing in the house, not to Asda!).

Just before Christmas last year (2015), we were shopping in Aldi though, when we saw a young woman out shopping with her children, and they were all in night clothes. Not cool “onesies”, but standard pyjama and dressing gown things. We’re talking after 3pm on a weekday. Then, on Christmas Day, we went to the local Akbar’s curry house for our Christmas lunch, and the table next to us had three or four children with them, and they were *all* in their nightwear – pyjamas and dressing gowns. Now I’m sorry if anybody finds this offensive, but that just isn’t right, and frankly, that behaviour offended *me*. The family (families) were showing no respect to the other diners in the restaurant, or to the owners and staff of the establishment. The parents were showing no responsibility towards the children (we’ll ignore them running around and just stealing things from our table). What an example to set, showing them that this type of dress is acceptable when eating out. This was relatively early evening too.

A couple of weeks later, the BBC News website even ran a story where the head teacher of a school has had to warn parents to stop coming to school, not just to drop them off, but to assemblies and parent’s evenings too, again in nightwear. Why? What is wrong with these people? Or is it something wrong with me? What am I missing?

Then today, on a nice, Sunday afternoon shopping trip to the local Morrisons store, there’s two young women, both in pyjamas and slippers, one in a day-glo pink dressing gown. Everybody was staring, and there were many hushed comments, it made us wonder if they were just doing it for attention. Again there were children with them, so the poor example was being demonstrated. I think that frankly, this is disgusting behaviour, but I still just don’t get the “why”. They were doing a full shop, with a trolley load, it’s not like they just had to quickly nip out for (late) breakfast materials!

Anyway, I’m probably just a confused old man. If anybody has an explanation, please, please let me in on the secret!

The Zoo Keeper


By TheZooKeeper

An Azure Cloud Architect with a background in messaging and infrastructure (Wintel). Bearded dog parent who likes chocolate, doughnuts and Frank's RedHot sauce, but has not yet attempted to try all three in combination!

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