Vogue’s fashion features director, Julia Hobbs, has pledged her allegiance to the nightie dress this season, styling her ruffled, broderie anglaise cotton minidress with bug-eyed sunnies and silver jewellery in LA. “I have an alternate ‘summer self’ – she will wear a house dress that’s little more than a nightie with bare feet (and Clairo blasting),” Hobbs explains. “Recently, I’ve been living in a white satin babydoll from Petra Collins’s witty I’m Sorry label. The mood is very: grown-up girlhood.”
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Indeed, there is more than a hint of The Virgin Suicides to this trend – a stark departure from the navel-baring, thigh-hugging Y2K silhouettes that have proliferated in recent seasons. Part girlish, part granny, apparently we are craving sartorial tropes that bring us comfort (both emotional and physical) right now; a cottagecore fantasy to take us away from the doom-scrolling and the dystopian news headlines.
But while the nightie dress may represent a bucolic daydream, modern styling is all about bringing it back down to earth. Fashion journalist Harling Ross, who recently launched a capsule collection of nightie-inspired dresses with If Only If, emphasises the importance of structure when styling the look. “[Nightie-style dresses] feel both innately personal and effortless, qualities that are often hard to pin down when putting together an outfit,” she explains. “Structured shoes (loafers, chunky sandals), a smattering of jewellery, and a bag with gravitas (like something made of suede or leather) are always reliable tools for grounding a nightgown firmly in the realm of daywear.”
