Friday Frock - Dinner Pajamas Edition

I had most incredible paper dolls when I was little - booklets and booklets full of 1930's and 40's couture and the impeccably cataloged movie wardrobes of silver screen starlets.  Vivien Leigh, and Grace Kelly were my favorites - I had Jeanette McDonald for a while, but her head was ripped off in an unfortunate windowsill accident. Twenty years later, I still have them all somewhere in a box, well-worn and frayed and very much loved. Which all brings us, in a roundabout way, to today's frock - which is of course, no such thing. It's a dreaded jumpsuit. Which is neither shirt nor pants, so in my mind must be filed under frocks.  Before you make hasty judgments and horrified faces at the word "onesie", hear me out....

One of those aforementioned paper dolls, contained, I believe, in the "Fashions of the Forties" booklet, was a flowing, midnight blue confection with a candy pink sash. It was titled, simply,  "Dinner Pajamas". I was incredibly taken with this idea as a child - a life so glamorous and hedonistic that you would dress in an opulent form of loungewear for entertaining and cocktails. You can spot the look in some old movies - usually paired with a cigarette holder and plushly carpeted Hollywood bungalows. I dressed Vivien and Grace in the ensemble constantly, and was heartbroken to learn that I was unlikely to find a similar look for an eight year old in an early nineties shopping mall.

And so this was the first thing that sprung to my mind when I saw this stylish getup in the latest Anthropologie catalog - Dinner Pajamas! Finally! To be donned upon arrival home after work - and much more sartorially acceptable than your terry sweats. You can look fabulous while answering the door or having friends over for drinks or desert - my usual evening meal - and yet still safely play the pajama card when asked to do something on your Friday night. "I would love to come out, but I'm already in my pajamas. Sorry." Though you know you're not sorry at all. 

So not a dreaded jumpsuit at all in fact. A new way of life. To be paired with posh platforms,  chunky gold jewelry, and a languorous expression.