Meet the creative power couple behind Irregular Sleep Pattern, who are changing the world of sleepwear one retina-tickling design at a time
Is there anything more frustrating when renovating a house than finding yourself in endless pursuit of a product that doesn’t exist? Jolene Crawford and Mil Stricevic of Irregular Sleep Pattern experienced just that when they moved in together nine years ago.
The unicorn in question was bedding. Nothing on the shelves reflected their colourful, spirited leanings. The couple couldn’t shake the thought that if they were on a fruitless search, other like-minded people probably were too: not only for distinctive duvets, but for pyjamas with a bit of pizzazz. So they started a business, Irregular Sleep Pattern, to fill an irregular-shaped hole in the market. “Well, first we joked about starting Irregular Sleep Pattern but didn’t do anything,” clarifies Jolene, sitting at the kitchen table of their Finnieston flat in a snazzy Irregular Sleep Pattern pyjama suit that matches the bubblegum-pink walls. “But then in 2017 I turned 40, and Mil turned 50. ‘It’s now or never,’ I said. ‘Do you actually want to do this?’” Jolene is the kind of person who gets things done. Decisive, dynamic, direct. These qualities made her a formidable TV producer for the BBC, her line of work when she first met Mil. “I thought she was very outgoing and capable; a brilliant connector,” he says of their first meeting.
Jolene recalls thinking that Mil seemed nurturing and creative. “He was also slightly spiky, which I liked, because I am as well,” she admits. The co-founders of Irregular Sleep Pattern had a lot in common. Music, for a start. Mil used to play bass guitar in the chamber-pop outfit The Pearlfishers, while Jolene jumped between the fiddle, vocals and keyboards in the indie band Captain and the Kings. They also each had two children from previous relationships: Ruby and Bella, Jolene’s two, and Mila and Anna, Mil’s twins. “It felt like a meeting of minds, even though we came from different backgrounds,” says Jolene, who was named after the Dolly Parton song and grew up in a musical, craft-loving family in Aberdeenshire. Mil spent much of his youth away from his family home in Glasgow at a boarding school in England (“Not a happy experience,” he says).
It was perhaps more nature than nurture that influenced his path. His late mother was a chamber musician and silversmith and his biological father, whom he rarely saw, an art history professor in America. Mil went into teaching too. Before embarking on the Irregular Sleep Pattern adventure, he was a lecturer in product design at the Glasgow School of Art for 15 years. Currently, he also runs his own design practice and has conceptualised an eclectic mix of projects including the ‘listening’ Ian Dury memorial bench in London’s Richmond Park. He’s also creative director at the Glasgow-based Williams Bros Brewing Co, responsible for its punchy, hyper-funky packaging, and even had a stint in fashion designing shoes for a Belgian brand. “But after two years I felt it was all very wasteful, working on seasonal things and churning stuff out,” he says. “I also became interested in how brands work. They aren’t always capitalist enterprises; the NHS is a brand, so is Oxfam. I like to open students up to the idea that the whole brand experience is underlined by values.”
Irregular Sleep Pattern’s values came instinctively to the husband-and-wife team. They like beautiful things that are ethically made and well tailored. They reject trends and rampant consumerism. Their home, a fivebedroom flat in a blond sandstone terrace that pulsates with vibrant colours, prints and art, is the font of their aesthetic: playful, bright, graphic. Music informs the names of their designs. “‘Irregular’ is the guiding light for all we do,” adds Jolene. “We don’t follow the rules of a normal fashion brand. Our pyjamas are genderless, and our sizing goes up to 4XL.”
After three years of research and development (“Manufacturing is complicated,” notes Jolene, who takes care of the business side while Mil leads on design), Irregular Sleep Pattern launched mid-pandemic in 2020 with pyjama suits in six colourways and two reversible duvet covers, all bearing confident, kinetic patterns. It was fortuitous timing. “Mil doesn’t often get riled up but he got so angry at an article in The Guardian about bland, beige loungewear that we started the hashtag #irregularstandards on Instagram to encourage people to dress up,” remembers Jolene. “Loads of people joined in.”
Although their pyjamas were conceived as sleepwear, customers were soon wearing them out and about. No wonder. They are beautifully cut, with utilitarian twin-needle stitching and high-waisted, ankle-skimming trousers, even passing for jumpsuits when the top is tucked in. Couples have married in them and the comedian Joe Lycett – who owns several pairs – has taken them for a whirl on the red carpet.
One customer messaged to say he’d worn his to a Roisin Murphy gig and, on spotting a stranger in the same pair, was compelled to high-five them. “It feels like we’re building a community,” smiles Jolene, who has been known to invite said community to fundraising gigs held in her living room, most recently in aid of Palestine. “We get lots of love letters from our customers, because they’ve just bought into the whole package of what we’re doing.”
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