Shopping Attire

Just this week I was having lunch and a man came into the shop wearing unusual flannel trousers, green flannel that was printed with little figures of some sort that I couldn't quite make out but that might have been teddy bears.

Well! I thought, that's unusual. I hadn't seen flannel trousers quite like these — at least, not during the daytime. Hmm. They did indeed look a lot like pajamas, once I thought about it a bit. Could it be that here was the vanguard of a new fashion trend?

Yes, apparently it could. Seemingly within mere hours (the prepared mind and all that) this bit of news fell in front of my eyes:

A Tesco store has asked customers not to shop in their pyjamas or barefoot.

Notices have been put up in the chain's supermarket in St Mellons in Cardiff [Wales] saying: "Footwear must be worn at all times and no nightwear is permitted."

A spokesman said Tesco did not have a strict dress code but it does not want people shopping in their nightwear in case it offends other customers.

[from "Tesco ban on shoppers in pyjamas", BBC News, 28 January 2010.]

Not only is it a fashion trend, it's an international fashion trend.

I don't exactly what I think of it. Not much, I suspect, although I am the son of a mother who wouldn't have been caught dead in public with a single curler in her hair. Chances are, if it's a guy wearing the pajama bottoms and he's not wearing underwear…well, let me not be too crude to finish.

Ms [Elaine] Carmody, who spoke after spending £102 in the supermarket, added: "If you're allowed to wear jogging bottoms, why aren't you allowed to wear pyjamas in there, that's what I don't understand?

"I think it's stupid really not being allowed in the supermarket with pyjamas on.

"It's not as if they're going to fall down or anything like that. They should be happy because you're going to spend all that money."

I was with Ms. Carmody — that comparison to jogging bottoms makes good sense — until she got to her concluding analysis: "It's not as if they're going to fall down or anything like that."

Could that be what drives the store's policy, a fear that the pajama bottoms might fall down?

Is that what people fear most about pajama bottoms? I'd never known.

Posted on January 30, 2010 at 23.13 by jns · Permalink
In: All, Laughing Matters, Personal Notebook

3 Responses

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  1. Written by BearToast Joe
    on Monday, 1 February 2010 at 15.48
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    If I shopped in my sleepwear . . . . . . .oh my.

  2. Written by jns
    on Monday, 1 February 2010 at 16.59
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    I think I understand you completely Joe; I have the same…situation.

  3. Written by S.W. Anderson
    on Tuesday, 2 February 2010 at 00.34
    Permalink

    It's probably been 12 or 15 years since we sat down in a fast-food place and had a young couple sit across from us in sweatshirts, pants and sneakers. Neither appeared to have any particular devotion to jogging or physical fitness. They both could've benefited from a few quality minutes spent at a basin, and using a comb, too. I thought it a shame they couldn't or wouldn't do better than that for something to wear dining out, even in a fast-food place. I wasn't put off to the point of wishing the management had shown them the door. I guess it just strikes me as kind of a no-class way to dress for other than going to the gym, jogging or playing some kind of athletic game at a park.

    Now, I suppose, we'll be treated to a bunch of people showing up at all sorts of places wearing pajamas. Tacky, tacky, tacky.

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