beach pyjama suit
Accession Number NWHCM : 1972.460.13.3
Description
Jacket; from 3 piece beach pyjama suit, trousers have elastic top of cream rayon with applied v shaped pockets and hem bands of printed sponge cloth, the blouse is v necked and sleeveless cream rayon with applied shaped band of printed sponge cloth at neck, the jacket is of printed sponge cloth in futuristic design of green, yellow, red, black and turquoise on cream, straight and unfastened, straight sleeves, facing and 2 pockets of cream rayon, from the early 1930s
Read Morebeach pyjama suit
Beach pyjamas were highly popular suits which were scandalous for contributing to the popularisation of women wearing trousers. While we now associate the word 'pyjamas' with sleepwear, the inital persian word (pāy-jāmeh) referred simply to leg garments. For many women, wearing beach pyjamas would have been their first time wearing a garment which wasn't a skirt or dress. Beach pyjamas demonstrated gender equality in the interwar years, laying the foundations for the social freedoms women would experience during and after the second world war.