From Sleepwear to Sportswear: How Beach Pajamas Reshaped Women's Fashion

How did women begin wearing pants? Prior to the 1920s it was a rarity to see women in pants in the Western world, but as the silk pajama trouser suit moved from the boudoir to the beach in the early 1920s it cemented the image of the trousered woman.

Worn by Jean Harlow and Marlene Dietrich, painted by Raoul Dufy and immortalized in F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night, between the two world wars pajamas came to symbolize much more than sleepwear. This book explores how the pajama pheno...