Hush provides kit for overworked women’s down-time moments: pyjamas, sweaters and snuggly socks, on sale online or by mail order. But the company’s major contribution to nightwear and loungewear is the cardigown, a three-quarter-length hybrid of the dressing gown and the cardigan (brown, cream, chocolate, mocha and pink, £70). I wear mine when I sit down on a Saturday to sort through the week’s unopened post – an oddly therapeutic chore, though probably not everybody’s idea of idling. This pile of correspondence inevitably includes at least four upmarket catalogues of the Hush species: mail order reinvented for those who call the place where they lounge the sitting, or the drawing, room.
Lounge (in its reception-room sense) carries associations of traditional mail order, which is currently beset with problems unless it has been updated, special-ises in outsize or is the offshoot of a major name such as Argos.
The depiction of an ideal lifestyle is the reason behind the success of Hush and others in the niche-catalogue sector: Pure, Plumo, Toast, Wall and Boden, the genre’s pioneer. Hush is close to doubling its sales every year, thanks to the image it presents of guilt-free relaxation; the model in the lace-trim nightie (midnight blue or baltic, £35) is chiefly engaged in looking langourous. I tend to be more agitated when organising my stash of post, with its unsolicited invitations to apply for usurious credit cards and suchlike. But last weekend the arrival of the Hush spring catalogue provided some respite from my usual junk-mail irritation.
The range on offer in this catalogue acknowledges that spring days are rarely balmy. The model reclines in a Sloppy Joe sweater (purple, raspberry, mocha or pink, £55); ribbed leggings (grey or midnight blue, £20); silk pyjamas (plum, £95) and sheepskin boots (£120). She looks warm, but (metaphorically) chilled, although given that the pictures were shot in Australia, chattering teeth may not have been an issue.
Mandy Watkins – the Australian owner of Hush, and a former marketing boss at adidas – came to Britain in 2001 and started the business two years later, catering for women who wanted cosy nightwear without the usual depressingly juvenile cartoon logos. But Hush does not ban prints: its vintage rose pyjamas are a bestseller; its heart-pattern pyjamas are a love-in-a-cold-climate Valentine’s Day gift. These cost £45, for which you could get eight pairs at Primark – one reason why a colleague who bought the Hush vintage rose set felt let down when the colour ran in a handwash (although an immediate refund was offered when she contacted the company).
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As my own cardigown remains pristine, although it has been wrapped round me almost every evening since October, I have ordered the thicker winter floral pyjamas (reduced to £25) as a March survival measure. I will also be deriving extra warmth from the moral glow of turning down the central heating.