By HOLLY JACKSON
I hadn’t contemplated becoming a pajama person until this past summer, when I found myself chasing down a neighbor’s gigantic bulldog (complete with post-vet neck cone) in my front garden while wearing nothing more than a slightly sheer vintage slip. Since I work from home, I often find myself not getting dressed until it’s required to leave my house. However, now that I live in a busy neighborhood, a lot more people see my clothes during the day than they used to. Packages get delivered, friends stop by unexpectedly for coffee or snacks and you occasionally find yourself chasing down a sweet but seriously lost dog. I didn’t think I was going to start getting dressed while I worked, but it did seem like time to upgrade to some socially appropriate loungewear options.
There aren’t many brands that I have a purely consumer perspective on, since I interact with so many reps and brand owners these days both through my columns and as clients of my business. Bedhead is one of the few exceptions. I’ve been a repeat customer of theirs for almost half a year now and currently own four pairs of their plus-size pajamas. There are other brands selling plus-size pajamas on the market, but my personal experience has been that their fabrics tend to show pilling and wear fairly quickly. Bedhead’s cotton and sateen pajamas stand up to lots of wear and tear making their price tag a much better deal in the long run.
I’m kind of a print junkie, which makes Bedhead perfect for me. Their prints are designed in house, so you won’t see them used by any other brand. What makes them remarkable is that they walk the line between kitsch and elegant, so you don’t feel like a child wearing printed pajamas so much as you feel like a deeply sophisticated adult with a sense of fun. Their designs feature everything from dogs to snow a covered town to flowers to classic literature, but are balanced out with luxe details and vibrant colors that make everything feel cohesive. If prints aren’t your thing, they also offer lots of beautiful plain pajamas with elegant embroidered details that are also gorgeous.
Most importantly, Bedhead deals with their plus-size line the same way I wish every company would: they go out of their way to offer every print in the same styles up to a size 26. There are no obvious “adaptions” of design and no skimping on the luxurious details – to Bedhead, plus-size customers occupy the same space as core size customers. This sounds like a small thing, but is practically revolutionary within the industry. I spend a lot of time explaining to people that plus-size customers aren’t asking for the moon and we aren’t some mystery: we merely want to be able to buy the same pieces that everyone else can, without design dilution and without a gigantic price markup. Bedhead clearly gets this and should be applauded for their extra effort, since it must add to their internal costs and to their design time. The only way plus-size consumers will see this is to “vote” with their money, so I personally intend to keep spending part of my sleepwear budget with Bedhead for the foreseeable future.
