Shopping for PJ’s — How Hard Can It Be?

My youngest sis­ter has an upcom­ing birth­day.  I called her the other day and asked if there were any­thing spe­cific she wanted.  She listed two dif­fer­ent CD titles that she’d like to have and then men­tioned that she’d also love to have a new pair of pajamas.

It’s pos­si­ble that my sis­ter men­tioned the PJ’s as just on off-the-cuff “oh by the way” gift idea, but my brain inter­preted it as a direct chal­lenge:  “Any­one can buy me one or the other of these CD’s but it will take some­one really clever, some­one who loves me enough to make the effort, to find me a pair of PJ’s that I love.”

PJ’s — how hard can that really be?  Here are the requirements: 

• flan­nel pants (either 3/4 or full length)
• short-sleeve t-shirt
• shirt can­not have buttons
• both pieces have to be 100% cot­ton and should be long and not form-fitting
• bot­toms would ide­ally have elas­tic and draw­string waistband
• set should match and should actu­ally be PJ’s and not just a pair of bot­toms and a t-shirt

I really didn’t think this would be very dif­fi­cult.  But so far I’m bat­ting zero.

 I started at Old Navy.  The have cot­ton flan­nel bot­toms but all of their tops are long-sleeved with but­tons.  Strike one.

Next I check out The Gap.  They, too, have cot­ton flan­nel bot­toms but the mix-and-match PJ tops are all either long sleeved, long-sleeved with but­tons, or skimpy camis.  Strike two.

So then I vis­ited Victoria’s Secret.  Their flan­nel PJ sets include flan­nel pants with weird waist­bands and long-sleeved flan­nel but­ton­down tops.  Strike three.

I fig­ured I’d check Sierra Trad­ing Post to see what they had.  They actu­ally had two or three dif­fer­ent t-shirt and long bot­tom PJ sets but they were all too ugly to even con­sider. Strike four.

Amer­i­can Eagle’s selec­tion included long-sleeve tops and Aeropostale’s t-shirts are a poly/cotton blend. Strikes five and six.

At this point I was begin­ning to sus­pect that my sis­ter had sent me on a wild-goose chase, so I stretched out beyond my first-line shop­ping sources and did a Google search. That brought up sev­eral on-line stores that I’d never heard of but promised to have women’s PJ’s. Strikes seven through twenty.

Now what? Well, I can always fall back on the CD idea. But I haven’t com­pletely given up — yet. I fig­ure I’ll see what’s avail­able at T.J. Maxx and Marshall’s. I only have a few days left, though, before I have to make a deci­sion and get some­thing in the mail.

Any sug­ges­tions?  Where are the cot­ton t-shirt & flan­nel pant PJ’s hiding?

edit:  I hap­pened to look at Aero­postale again and noticed that while most of their tees are poly/cotton blends, there are one or two that are 100% cot­ton.  Ques­tion is, are the styles too young for my about-to-turn-39 year old sis­ter.  She’s pretty hip so maybe it would be okay.

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