Days roll into nights with the new lounge-itude

The innerwear-as-outerwear look, and its close relative, sleepwear-as-outerwear, is a trend that resurfaces from time to time, depending on the economy and the arrival of spring, unless of course you are Hugh Hefner or similarly hedonistic ladies who lounge, who luxuriate in silk robes all the time. Pajama dressing is particularly in vogue now, with patterned wide-leg pants and matching tops rolling out of bed on to the runways of Celine, Louis Vuitton and Stella McCartney. In the late ‘90s my take on this was to wear a vintage (read: thrift store) slip dress to class one day, paired with chunky clogs. I think my peg was Courtney Love. My professor asked me whether I had forgotten to put on my clothes. That was the end of that. 

With Josie Natori’s new boutique Josie now open in Rustan’s, I might just give the look another go. The famed loungewear and lingerie designer has created a collection for younger women, those who can acceptably prance around in a lacy camisole and platform pumps. Her four muses for the launch are gals-about-town with successful multi-careers, women who look great in house clothes but probably don’t spend that much time at home. They styled their own looks for the evening, using intimates from the Indochine-inspired Josie line.

Chef and Philippine Star columnist Stephanie Zubiri wore a teensy floral romper with a black blazer. “I mixed this with something masculine and structured,” she says. “The key with sleepwear is to mix soft and hard to make it more wearable, and add chunky accessories. Nothing too soft or feminine, or else it becomes too boudoir.”   

With flowing mojitos and Bea Tantoco providing the groove, the launch was less a fashion show than a house cocktail party with beautiful guests dressed in their sexiest pantulog. “It’s current, a new take on the modern woman’s lifestyle. What you wear at home is the same thing you wear for coffee with friends, or when you go pick up your kids,” explains Rustan’s buyer Katrina Tantoco-Lobregat. “The chemises can be worn with leggings, stilettos or chunky heels — that already is an outfit for a club.” And when you come home from the club, you just have to kick off your shoes and hop into bed.

Stephanie Kienle-Gonzalez agrees with the collection’s versatility. “It’s quite easy to work with Josie (the brand). The material is so silky and the prints are so vivid and vibrant. I just tucked this caftan into a simple pair of tailored black shorts,” says the newly married Philux marketing manager.

Designer Rosanna Ocampo Rodriguez is no stranger to the slinky slip with spirited prints, and feels instantly at home in Josie. “I can really connect with the bold colors and bright patterns, the mixing and matching of prints,” she says, and outfit-wise, she’s good to go with just the caftan and a killer pair of heels. “It’s natural.”

With pieces all below P5,000, loungewear-as-everywear is set to become the new natural. It’s sexy, comfortable and playful, and it’s not just a look, as Natori herself calls it, but a “mindset.”