THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. **** Saturday/Sunday, March 28 - 29, 2020 |D3
THE OFF DUTY SLEEP ISSUE | STYLE & FASHION
DAVE URBAN; F. MARTIN RAMIN/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, STYLING BY ANNE CARDENAS (SOCKS, SLIPPERS, SWEATER) ; ENZO PÉRÈS-LABOURDETTE (SHEEP)
If you’re a thwarted sleeper,
sedating methods like medi-
tating or listening to hypnotic
podcasts might help, but
there’s no more time-honored
trick for initiating sleep than
counting sheep. This sweater
by France’s Lanvin provides
ample inspiration for tabulat-
ing fuzzy creatures. It is made
from fluffed-out wool and in-
triguingly echoes a sheep
sweater that Princess Diana
wore back in the 1980s. While
her knit featured a single
black sheep amid a white
flock (perhaps a reference to
her oft-insinuated place in the
royal family) this sweater’s
animals are harmoniously all
ivory. Patterned Wool Jumper,
$1,790, lanvin.comSheep
On It
Thunders Love strike that
ideal balance of toasty yet
silky soft. With a slouchy
(read: not foot-corseting) rib
knit, these camp socks are
as cozy in bed as they are
tied into a pair of boots. And
they’re made from recycled
material to put any environ-
mentalist’s mind at ease.
Charlie Collection Socks,
about $27, thunderslove.comIt might sound peculiar to
the uninitiated, but sleep
doctors often recommend
their patients slumber in
socks to regulate the body’s
temperature at night. All
socks are not made equal
though: You’ll swelter in
cashmere blends and itch in
coarse polyesters. These tri-
colored, Egyptian-cotton
socks from Spanish brandLightly Toast Your Toes
ment. The tender suede
slides also have tassels on
the front—a detail stolen
from prim dress shoes—
lending a smidgen of formal-
ity to midnight snacking.
And if you’re working from
home over the next weeks,
these could be your dress
slippers. Hender Scheme
Suede Slippers,$155, mo-
hawkgeneralstore.comWhat fool ever thought that
slippers should have a back?
As you prepare to drowsily
trek from your bedroom to
the fridge, you should be
able to exert minimal effort.
Which means not even hav-
ing to wrestle your foot into
an enclosed slipper. These
open-back house shoes from
Japan’s Hender Scheme
present no such impedi-Shuffle Off to Get Buffalo Wings
7
In the winter,
Kevin Wang
needs his paja-
mas. The corpo-
rate strategist at a New
York hospital has a wife
who “likes to take the cov-
ers.” The armor of his flan-
nel PJs protects him when
he loses control of the com-
forter and becomes exposed
to the crisp, sleep-compro-
mising air. Some could say
that Mr. Wang, 28, should
just turn his heat up, but
he says he’d rather avoid
that, a decision both the
eco-conscious and the bud-
get-conscious could en-
dorse. In the summer, Mr.
Wang subs out full-length
bottoms for boxers, which
“just seem more hygienic”
than going nude.
According to Dr. Winter,
hygiene fears are not mere
alarmism. If you took a
black light to the sheets of
a nude sleeper, he ex-
plained, you might detect
fecal matter or urine. If
those concerns are enough
to keep you up in the mid-
dle of the night, his advice
is to-the-point: “Maybe just
put on a pair of shorts or
something.” And to thatend, wash your sheets regu-
larly.
Hygiene concerns aside,
sleepers who favor clothing
feel that even a threadbare
pair of boxers or a ratty old
T-shirt can prevent awkward
moments at 2 a.m. Neil Stra-
ghalis, 49, a San Francisco
designer with young chil-
dren, explained that “there’s
often nighttime traffic” in
his bedroom. If you’re get-
ting up in the wee hours to
deal with a rambunctious
kid, you might feel more
comfortable in at least a
pair of underwear. Members
of childless couples, it
seems, have no such wor-
ries—several I spoke with
noted that both they and
their significant others sleep
in the buff.
Even devoted naked
sleepers find that their
strategy falters when
they’re outside their own
home. “If I’m a guest in
someone’s house, I’ll wear
just a pair of boxer briefs,”
said the life coach Mr. Ber-
nardo. That way he doesn’t
risk a mortifying, risqué
run-in with his host en
route to the bathroom.
—Jacob GallagherIs Sleeping Naked a
Glorious Return to Nature?
To Noah
Grosshandler,
sleeping nude
feels freeing. For
three years now, the 24-
year-old technology project
manager in New York has
shed the boxers and
T-shirts he once wore to
bed to goau naturel.He
just finds slumbering in the
buff more comfortable than
wearing bunchy underwear.
And while he isn’t con-
vinced that nudity im-
proved the quality of his
shut-eye, he fears switching
back would erode it. “If I
went back, I think I would
probably sleep worse.”
Every night, men and
women around the U.S.
make the same choice as
Mr. Grosshandler. A 2018
survey by the sleep-accou-
trement reviewer Mattress
Advisor found that 58% of
the 1,000 participants slept
completely nude.
According to Dr. Chris
Winter, a neurologist and
sleep doctor in Charlottes-
ville, Va., getting under the
covers naked could enhance
your sleep. “Your body tem-
perature changes through-
out the night,” he ex-plained, so if you go to bed
wearing warm pajamas or
even boxers (depending on
how hot your bedroom is)
your body temperature
might start too high. As it
ticks up, so will your dis-
comfort.
Many of the nude sleep-
ers I spoke with had strong
feelings about their bed-
ding. Blake Kim, 27, a
startup entrepreneur in
New York City, praised his
“soft cover and duvet,”
which he would rather ex-
perience naked. In the win-
ter, he tosses on an electric
blanket, compensating for
the loss of the swaddling
sweatpants he used to wear.
Daniel Bernardo, 37, a Man-
hattan-based life coach, had
similarly fond words for the
comforter that hugs him
when he’s sleeping bare.
Comfort and an aversion to
encumbrances drove his de-
cision to go nude at night.
“I toss and turn,” he said,
and so “felt twisted up in
the stuff that I wore.”
Every time he’d roll over,
his shirt would get caught
and disturb his sleep—a
problem that’s history now
that he rests in the raw.YES NO
564“Thinkoutsideoftheshoebox.”