THE CAT'S PAJAMAS LVII

Tad Tuleja

A collection of the (mostly) true origins of familiar phrases

THE CAT'S PAJAMAS

The namesake entry for this book refers to E.B. Katz, the most famous of the Savile Row tailors in Regency England (1811-1820). He counted among his clients a dozen peers of the realm, including the Prince of Wales and the kingdom's pre-eminent fashion plate, Beau Brummel. A specialist in elegant men's nightwear, Katz was known as a stickler for detail. For the pajamas of his aristocratic clients, he would use nothing but the rarest Chinese silk, and he is said to have employed two dozen seamstresses at one time to do the brocade work on one of the Prince's smoking gowns. The "Katz pajamas" became a byword for sartorial, and then general, excellence. The corruption to cat's apparently arose as a jibe among reform-minded members of Parliament.