Funny, Cecily Brown had told me that one of her dealers and a dear friend, Stefania Bortolami, gives her artist friends pajamas from Rome for Christmas. Seems pajamas-as-Christmas-presents are a thing with art dealers and their artists. John Currin tells me that his London dealer, Sadie Coles, sends him ones from Turnbull & Asser for Christmas. The artist Diamond Stingily comes by with Pucci, her artist friend Martine Syms’s best-in-show Pomeranian, and my ears perk up when she tells me that the only place to get pajamas is a store called Schostal in Rome. “All the artists go there,” she says. Turns out artists know about the place because of Gavin Brown, whose Roman gallery is in Sant’Andrea de Scaphis, a ninth-century deconsecrated church. Gavin and his wife, artist Hope Atherton, have introduced legions to the brand. Schostal pajamas are made of the finest materials, sewn with a sky-high thread count that makes them as soft as a baby mole’s skin and slightly see-through. They come in solids and stripes in mouthwatering colors.
I have to have a pair. However, I’m hopeless when it comes to ordering anything online, even FreshDirect. Then, Hope herself drops by for afternoon tea one Monday in June—and before I know it, a delicious pair of lemon Schostals with red-and-white pinstripes are winging their way to me from Rome. They’re not cheap—nearly $300—thanks to Trump’s tariffs.
The whole idea of wearing pajamas is to trick myself into feeling better. When I tell my friend and favorite dermatologist Joel Kassimir that I’ve decided to live in pajamas from now on, he says, “Like Peter Marino’s leathers, Julian Schnabel’s pajamas, and Vinny ‘Chin’ Gigante’s bathrobe, it is a uniform, and it works.”
The artist Rachel Feinstein brings me the best sashimi lunch from Sugarfish by Sushi Nozawa and we talk pajamas. She loves hers. “They’re by Dôen, a company that Flora (my 17-year-old daughter) is into, and she’s gotten me into them. It’s not really my style. They’re very Laura Ashley, actually—new Gen Z Laura Ashley. Made out of incredibly thin fine cotton. But I love them. They have a blue delft-like pattern, and the minute I’m home, I put them on. I don’t like silk—too cloying and hot.” No silk for me either. Or satin: too 1930s starlet boudoir—Carole Lombard, Claudette Colbert, Lauren Bacall, or Katharine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby.
