Fashionable pyjamas are all the rage, claim those who know, defending Elaine Carmody, the “pyjama-martyr” of Tesco, Cardiff, even if with tongue firmly in cheek. Ms Carmody was escorted out of the shop when she went to buy “a packet of fags” in her pyjamas. No unshod feet, and no bedwear, proclaims Tesco’s new dress code policy, else others may be offended or embarrassed. In Shanghai, the drive against nightclothes in public is being headed by the government, which wants its citizens not to be draped in bedwear when walking their dogs or popping into the shop in the run-up to the 2010 World Expo. Such prudish wieldings of the wet blanket on the casualness of everyday living have naturally provoked the ire of civil rights activists. Why should people not wear what they want, as long as they are ‘properly’ covered? Even civil rights do not include the right not to wear anything or not be ‘decently’ covered.

But pyjama-based fashionable suits meant for parties are not the same as the pyjamas people wear to bed, just as Tesco’s dress code (probably its pyjama-clad customers are fewer in number than those offended by bedwear) is not the same as a government firman. Looking beyond such engaging confusions, it would seem that the dress code issue has a simple enough source — in normal habits of socialized human beings in public spaces. Not very many of the civil rights activists would go to a formal dinner in a bikini. Not unless they wanted to create a hullabaloo. Nightwear is not for shopping or walking the dog, it is for the bed, and the distinction has to do as much with hygiene as with convention. And the markers of separate spaces for interaction are formal as well as necessary: few women would like the grocer to use their bed as a shop counter. Dressing for dinner, for example, whether in a restaurant or at a party, is a way of acknowledging the occasion and other people’s presence according to one of the multifarious unwritten contracts by which society functions. Sometimes an essential job is marked out by a dress code, as in the case of a uniformed policeman or a nurse. It may not be pleasant when the code is used to signal privilege or exclusivity, as it often is, but no convention can be used selectively.

In a country like India, with its numerous cultures and differing standards of living and education, dress codes may seem a little bewildering. For example, if shops equivalent to Tesco discourage the lungi, this would target men alone. For many women, the lungi is a fashion, or at least an outdoor, garment. And too much irony would attach to nightwear; there are millions who live and sleep on the streets. As in all conventions, good sense is the best guide in deciding the use of dress codes rather than strict, if high-minded, principles.