Nightwear, nightmare!

One spends one third of one’s life in bed so, logically speaking, one third of one’s attire should be for the night. But in my wardrobe, at least, it aint so. I cast an eye over my worn and torn, jaded and faded heap of jammies and nighties, and decided to go shopping.

If you have ever gone shopping for night attire, you will know how difficult it is. Nightwear brings out the fantasist in designers, more than any other kind of attire, it seems. Although I steered well clear of Ann Summers, many of the nighties I viewed seemed to have been made for ladies with Personal Services Plc after their names. In some stores, the only alternatives to these sparkly, see-through itsy-bitsys were voluminous, Victorian, lace-trimmed behemoths with in-built chastity alarms.

Then there were those items in the sickliest of pastels, with cutesy appliqués on the front, their creators seeming to imagine that our brains turn to glop while we are asleep. Admittedly, there were some gorgeous creations; full-length nighties in lush fabrics, with negligees and wraps to match, all worthy of a Hollywood screen goddess. But if you don’t want to play out that fantasy, or any of the others I have mentioned, your only option seems to be to go naked in bed.

My ideal night attire would be a fine, cotton jersey shift in strong colours, that covers the bits, with a line of philosophy emblazoned across the front: Man, know thyself, or something like that. Finally, I caught my quarry; a darling knee-length number, neither stifling nor revealing, in a pretty-but-not-twee floral print. Designers, more of the same, please.

The language of clutter

Deyan Sudjic, director of the Design Museum, has just published a book, The Language Of Things (Allen Lane, £20). Fiona MacCarthy writes in her review: Deyan Sudjic presents us with a nightmare vision of a world drowning in things.

MacCarthy sums up exactly the claustrophobia I feel when opening gifts of a Christmas or other nature, that help-where-am-I-going-to-put-all-this-stuff? sensation. And I am not alone in being one of those souls who throw out one object when another comes in.

There are exceptions to this rule, of course, books, CDs and DVDs being three of them. But these 'experience' items most often stimulate the mind, rather than deaden and obfuscate. If I was an environmental physicist - is there such a thing? - I could numerically define how much energy is added to, or taken away from our lives by the objects we surround ourselves with. If there is such a practitioner out there, please do get in touch.

Until now, such science has been buried in the mysticism of Feng-shui, and in the possesion of new-age crystals. In the meantime, I continue my search for mentally stimulating and physically comfortable surroundings - are the two compatible?

I leave you with Deyan Sudjic's claim that the greatest form of luxury is the relief from the clutter of too many things.