Life — April 24, 1931 — page 8: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# "How Pajamas Came Down Stairs" This humorous article by Tom Sims satirizes the early 20th-century fashion trend of wearing pajamas in public spaces—particularly during daytime. The accompanying sketch shows a woman in pajamas descending stairs while a man peers around a doorway, apparently surprised or scandalized. The satire targets how pajamas, once exclusively sleepwear, gradually infiltrated acceptable public appearance through successive steps: first at beachside resorts, then in shop windows and on clotheslines, eventually appearing in daytime social settings. Sims humorously traces this social shift to practical and criminal factors—nightshift workers, builders lowering ceilings forcing residents into higher apartments, and crime prevention—claiming these mundane reasons explain fashion's most ridiculous trend: casual pajama-wearing as normal daytime attire.