A certain age? No sweat
Sarah Kleiman’s entry into menopausal clothing was, she recalls, dramatic. “I was waking up drenched in sweat, surrounded by cold, damp bedding. It was very unpleasant and impossible to get a decent night’s sleep. I was permanently exhausted.”
Dramatic, but not unusual. “I looked for some sleepwear that would help the situation, but it was all awful and surgical-looking, which is weird, because it’s not as if it’s only menopausal women who perspire at night.”
Menopausally minded labels are rare, bordering on extinct,
despite the average age of the big-name creative – and their demographic. Fashion is a much more compelling sell when it has a purpose, but it’s allergic to too much reality.
So Kleiman, a former lawyer, along with her friends Nancy Zeffman (formerly in advertising with Saatchi) and Eileen Willett (ex-nicole Farhi), launched Cucumber Clothing, a small range of stylish nightwear that wicks away moisture “but doesn’t look remotely frumpy. That was our bottom line.”
It’s a simple enough brief, but it took more than a year to source the right fabric – one that did the job and retained its colour, wash after wash.
What is this magical material? The navy pieces are 100 per cent polyester microfibre and the silver grey contains 12 per cent rayon.
“Women get hung up on wearing cotton or silk to keep cool at night, but when it comes to the heavy lifting, they’re outclassed by technical fabrics,” says Zeffman. “Cotton is useless when it comes to sweating. It takes ages to dry and it smells. Our nightwear dries almost as soon as it’s out of the wash.”
There are camisole PJ sets and nighties – none of them anything that, as Zeffman says, “you would be embarrassed for your partner to see you in”.
They counsel you not to tumble dry or iron your PJS – it alters the way the fibres lie.
This is as real and as pertinent (albeit niche) as fashion labels come – and bring it on.
The six pyjama styles come in sizes from 10 to 18, a big span for such a tiny company, and the models on the website are “normal” women.
“One of them is a gynaecologist,” says Kleiman. “She rang us the next day to say, ‘It actually works’.”