Sleep awakening

Media mogul Arianna Huffington agrees that we’re in the midst of a massive sleep deprivation crisis. In 2007, she suffered a head injury caused by passing out from sleep deprivation, an experience that led her to transform her life. Her new book, The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life, One Night at a Time, champions sleep as a basic human right that is being violated, and makes a compelling case for powering down.

Following suit, many large corporations are trying to boost productivity by encouraging employees to get their shut-eye. Insurance behemoth Aetna is paying employees for every night they get more than seven hours, while Uber, Google and Zappos boast dedicated nap rooms and on-site nap pods.

The “sleep space” has even gotten the Silicon Valley makeover in recent years, with the rise of hip online startups including Casper, Tuft & Needle and Yogabed. These direct-to-consumer brands aren’t just shaking up the old-school bedding business by making mattresses more compact, affordable, and easier to transport; they’re also turning the pro-sleep lifestyle into an art form, with bedroom design hacks, napping tours and more.

Casper, poised to become the “Amazon of sleep,” has already added pillows and sheets to its product line, hosted a sleep symposium in New York with Huffington as a keynote speaker, published a trend report on sleep in partnership with Sean Monahan of trend forecasting agency K-Hole, and hosted free sleep-themed pop-up shops across the US, complete with waffle stations and pillowcase screen printers. But the company aspires to offer more than just a place to rest your head. To quote the report, “a bed is no longer furniture—it’s a content platform.”

Casper means this quite literally—it has even created Van Winkles, a website that publishes sleep-related news and features. Editor-in-chief Michael McCutcheon says that Casper started out trying to create pro-sleep products, but soon shifted focus. “It became clear to everyone (through feedback with customers, social media and reporters’ questions) that people cared much more deeply about sleep than the products that help us get it,” he says.

McCutcheon says that lack of information around sleep is one of the many barriers to improving it. This is where sleep-related content comes in. “Content that explores the relationship between sleep and well-being gives people the information they’re looking for,” McCutcheon explains. “But we don’t just talk about sleep all the time. We talk about all the things sleep impacts, too, like our moods, behavior, performance, productivity, friendships and more.”

Sleepwear is also experiencing an awakening, with labels Sleepy Jones and For Restless Sleepers elevating the formerly tired category—not only modernizing how we dress for bed, but popularizing the Man Repeller–approved “SleepCorp” trend of sporting silk pajamas in public, to parties, and even to the office. On the new chic sleepwear frontier, anything goes: even these $1,500 hotel slippers seen on Balenciaga’s S/S 16 runway.