Onesies are all the fashion, and a lot of them are really fun… some of them perhaps don’t exactly suit the person wearing them, and sometimes they don’t seem to be quite the right attire for a particular place or occasion, but as fun going-out wear for kids, or for comfortable and cosy wear at home, I think they are great.
Just in case onsies have passed you by, they are an all in one item of clothing, with a zip up the front, and usually made of a soft material, fleece, or brushed cotton, or chenille, that sort of thing. Quite often they are designed like a character of some sort, a tiger, perhaps, or a penguin, or a Father Christmas. I guess it’s a bit like a jump suit, but it is always soft nice fabric; it is definitely informal, and definitely comfortable!
However, if I think back to my childhood, little children used to wear siren suits; these were soft, stretchy, all in ones which could be pulled over night clothes if there was an air-raid when you need to rush quickly from your bed to the shelter. After the war, they were adapted, particularity for children, as warm and cosy clothes, easy to pull on… so I wasn’t born till much later, but there were still siren suits available for children. I guess the most famous siren-suit wearer was Sir Winston Churchill; with his stout form he must have found the soft stretchy siren suit extremely comfortable!
Siren suits in turn seem to have derived from boiler suits, which people still wear today, but they are definitely work-wear, and usually made from stronger fabrics which could protect the wearer from getting his or her ordinary clothes dirty, but might offer other protection too if they were reinforced in some way, or heat-proofed. The idea for them was that there was no gap between upper body clothes and trousers, the front which fastened right up to the throat, covered things which might flap dangerously into machinery or toxic liquids or fire, things such as shirt ends, ties, scarves, etc. Boiler suits have been used as uniforms as well as work wear, the French police, some universities, and over here in Britain
, council workers!
Lois Elsden 