One of the most dapper chaps in the annals of British fashion was the pajama impresario Derek Rose.
“He had this great air of elegance and insouciance about him,” Eric Musgrave, a men’s apparel journalist, said in an interview. “He was always immaculately turned out — just charm and taste personified.”
At his company, Derek Rose, he used those unimpeachable sartorial instincts to transform men’s nightwear from a dowdy afterthought into an upscale intimate-apparel category all its own.
Made with colorful high-end silks and cottons in Congleton, a market town near Manchester, Mr. Rose’s pajamas were a lot like the bespoke suits stitched on Savile Row in London — elegant, impeccable, pricey — except they were rarely seen beyond the bedroom.
Those who have owned or worn Derek Rose pajamas have included Charles de Gaulle, John Lennon (and Yoko Ono), Nelson Mandela, former President Gerald R. Ford, Leonardo DiCaprio, Harry Styles and various British aristocrats. Benedict Cumberbatch wore Derek Rose robes on the TV show “Sherlock.” The company’s nightwear also appeared in the films “Independence Day” (1996), “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider” (2001) and “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” (2001).
“The product was very much luxury with a capital L,” Paul Alger, the director of international business for the U.K. Fashion and Textile Association, said in an interview. “If you like formal pajamas, if you’re willing to iron them or have somebody iron them for you, the Derek Rose product is as good as you’re going to find.”
Mr. Rose died on Aug. 29 at a hospital in London, his son, Sacha, the chief executive of Derek Rose, said. He was 93.
His death was not widely reported in the United States, where his pajamas are sold at high-end stores like Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman.
How Mr. Rose became the King of Pajamas, as The Daily Mail once called him, is a story that dates to 19th-century India, when the country was under British rule. Colonial officers noticed that Indian men slept in silk or cotton pants that looked more comfortable than the long gowns British men were accustomed to wearing to bed.
Clothing companies began making pajamas. One was Bonsoir, founded by Mr. Rose’s father, Jack, in 1926. Working with Cecil Barnes, a cutter previously employed by a shirt maker, he paired the Indian-style trousers with a button-down jacket. Retailers like Harrods and Selfridges began stocking the sets, and in 1937, King George VI placed an order.
Mr. Rose joined the company in 1953. Two years later, Bonsoir provided costumes for “The Pajama Game,” the hit Broadway musical, when it played at the London Coliseum. His father sold the company to a large conglomerate in 1966, and Mr. Rose stayed on as managing director, focusing on global expansion.
In addition to marketing fancy pajamas, Mr. Rose became a kind of ambassador of English fashion. As chairman of the British Menswear Guild, he led delegations of dignitaries and royals — including Queen Elizabeth II — to trade shows around the world.
“He used to just glide around, so elegant in his movements that he must have been a very good dancer,” Mr. Musgrave said. “Never a hair out of place, never a crease — he looked as if he’d been shrink-wrapped or something and had just come out of the packaging beautifully formed.”
After Bonsoir’s parent company went into receivership in 1975, Mr. Rose started Derek Rose with his brother-in-law, John Randall. His pajamas were featured in full-page advertisements in magazines and newspapers.
“Wake up your style,” one said, “before you go to sleep.”
Derek Peter Rose was born on Sept. 29, 1932, in Margate, on the southeastern coast of England, and grew up in Hampstead Garden Suburb, outside London. His parents, Jack and Rosa (Weissblatt) Rosenberg, shortened the family surname before he was born.
Derek grew up amid the bombs of World War II. “I remember the start of the Blitz when the German bombers came up the Thames and bombed the docks,” he said in a 2024 interview with City of London School, a private day school he attended. “I remember looking out from my sister’s room and seeing the sky all around us was red, from the fires in the docks.”
He collected shrapnel and kept it in his bedroom.
“One night,” he recalled, “an incendiary bomb came through the skylight of our garage and burned out my father’s little Hillman Minx convertible.”
His father urged him to attend the Royal Technical College in Salford (now the University of Salford), where he studied textiles in preparation for entering the family business.
“I did chemistry,” he said in the 2024 interview. “I did design. All the different subjects that played a part in the business.”
He was obsessed with materials and traveled frequently to Communist Czechoslovakia to buy thread. While there, he said, he spied for Britain briefly, but ceased doing so when authorities proposed that he use his girlfriend as a honey trap, according to The Times of London.
Mr. Rose married Annette Krotoschin, a jewelry designer, in 1968. In addition to their son, she survives him, as do their daughter, Nancy Rose-Pagani, and five grandchildren.
Later in life, Mr. Rose began buying, at auction, nightwear worn by royalty and other famous people. His collection included a nightshirt worn by King Charles I; silk shortie pajamas that belonged to King George VI; a pure silk nightshirt owned by Winston Churchill (and embroidered with his initials); the Duke of Windsor’s dressing gown; former President John F. Kennedy’s night trousers; and a nightgown of Queen Victoria’s.
“My father was interested not just in the beauty of pajamas, but their function,” Sacha Rose said in an interview. “I remember growing up watching him with one of these magnifying glasses that he used to analyze the thread count of fabric.”
In his last days, Mr. Rose wore lime-green and pastel-pink Derek Rose pajamas in the hospital.
“In that environment, it was actually quite nice to see a bit of color and fun,” Sacha Rose said. “He was the best-dressed man there.”
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