Arid Blayne, a New York-based sleepwear company, wants you to feel cool in their pajamas.

The brand, which was launched last August by Arielle Cole, manufactures luxury cooling sleepwear to help people with night sweats get a better night’s sleep.

“I’m not trying to build a pajama company, I think we’re building a company that brings performance technology to the sleepwear industry in a way that it hasn’t been done before,” said Cole, the 36-year-old chief executive officer and founder, in an interview Wednesday.

The company was inspired by Cole’s own experience, taking medication for depression that caused severe night sweats, and she realized there wasn’t a fashionable solution for the millions of people dealing with the same issue from medication, postpartum, chemotherapy, perimenopause, menopause, among other things.

With her background at Ralph Lauren, where she worked six years until October 2023, she set out to design a pair of pajamas that combined high-performance cooling technology with elevated design. The brand was launched exclusively as direct-to-consumer on her website, aridblayne.com.

Last week, she added a men’s offering to the lineup. That includes a Classic T, Chill short, Henley shirt, and Lasso pant, retailing from $98 to $125, and in sizes S to XXL.

Arid Blayne uses fabric that actively pulls excess moisture (i.e., sweat) away from one’s skin, and keeps the skin up to 3 degrees Fahrenheit cooler by controlling how quickly sweat evaporates. The natural fibers in the fabric allow sweat to evaporate so one stays cool. Coolcore technology enhances the shape of each fiber to accelerate cooling and keep one’s skin dry. There are no coatings or chemicals.

Cole elaborated on the impetus behind the launch.

“The reason this all came to be is from a personal journal. At 27, I was diagnosed with depression, and obviously had a whole mental journey going on. I started taking medication — an SSRI, an antidepressant. The biggest side effect of those are crazy night sweats, where you wake up drenched through the sheets, through your clothes and everything, and I wasn’t sleeping through the night,” said Cole.

“My brain felt good, my thoughts were good, but from not sleeping, I was cranky, I was tired and your mood just kind of ebbs and flows. Every doctor tells you, ‘It is what it is. It’s a part of it.’ I was working at Ralph Lauren, and I was exposed to cooling technology within our fabrics. We were putting it in our wovens and our denim and in the back of my mind, I was always, “Hmmm, if it works for big and tall, these big guys, why can’t it work for me?’” she said.

During COVID-19, Cole moved to Los Angeles and then when they started going back to the office, she decided she wanted to create cooling pajamas. She said she didn’t like anything that was already in the market, everything was frumpy, and there was nothing cool, and there were chemicals [in the fabrics], so she went on a journey.

“I found the most amazing fabric and the way I describe it is if I was sleeping without it, sweating through my sheets, that’s a level 10. This keeps me at like a level four or five. I sleep through the night which has been amazing for my mental health,” said Cole.

“I used to sleep in these cute little rompers, but my legs were so warm, that’s where my furnace is. So I started sleeping in pants, and the pants became a natural barrier for the heat source which was great, but then my pants would ride up in the middle of the night, and then the furnace would ignite again. So then I started sleeping with socks and tucking my pants into socks. “Oh my God, like this is becoming too much. There has to be a better way,” said Cole.

She now has a patent pending for her pants. In the back of the pants is a hem where a piece of elastic comes out. “You pull the elastic out, and your ankle goes through here, and then you adjust the hem. It pulls back in so it gets tight around your ankle and now your wide leg pant won’t move in the middle of the night. So that’s been a huge game changer. We call it the Lasso pant,” she said.

She said what you really want is for the fabric to be all over your body, so sleeping in the long sleeve and the pant is the best because then the fabric is all over your body doing its job. The fabric is cooling you, and the moisture is getting wicked from all over your body.

She said the fabric is polyester, lyocell and elastane. She said what her vendor does is take the synthetic fiber and they go down to the fiber itself, and manipulate them into different shapes and sizes. “It increases the surface area, which increases all the cooling and moisture wicking properties. So literally you’ll wake up bone dry,” she said.

For women, Arid Blayne offers the Lasso pant, Henley shirt, Scoop tank, Crop T, and Chill short in sizes XS to 3XL. In the fall, they are expanding their offering to include different colors, materials, and new silhouettes. She said she’s learned that 80 percent of women suffer with night sweats, “so that’s a huge market.”

“For me, it’s medication-induced. However, you have postpartum, perimenopause, menopause, people going through chemotherapy, so the market is massive. Perimenopause and menopause are really being spoken about right now, so the timing is interesting,” she said.

For now, the brand is exclusively direct-to-consumer. She said she comes from Ralph Lauren so fortunately has connections to the wholesale world, “but I don’t think big departments stores are right [for us] at this time, because my pajamas can’t hang next to Eberjey [a popular luxury brand]. They’re going to get lost. You can put whatever you want on a hang tag, but no one is reading it,” she said.

Arid Blayne Lasso pants are $125, the long-sleeve Henley is $115, the T-shirt is $108, the short and the crop top are $88, and the tank is $98. The line is produced in Los Angeles, but she’s working to start new production in a month or two in China. “My goal is to get those prices down. Right now, we’re 15 to 20 percent above Eberjey,” she said.

Five percent of all Arid Blayne sales this month are going to SeekHer Foundation, supporting women’s mental health.

She started with such colors as blush, red and black and expanded to baby blue.

Cole discovered her fabric by attending the Functional Fabric Fair and testing out different fabrics and vendors. She landed on Coolcore, and this was their stock fabric. She said she’s working with them toward developing her own fabrics, and they’re coming out with a pointelle and seersucker in the spring. The tops have a double-layer front so you can be bra-free. She tries to drop newness every two months which can be a color extension. She’ll offer a new collection three times a year.

Asked what’s been the most challenging part of launching a new brand, she said, “The hardest part really has been figuring out where to sell it. I know have a great product, I have a great team, I created a great supply chain, but now, how do you sell something that is so new to the consumer and educate them?

For the first year, she anticipates she’ll generate $250,000 in sales. When she launched, she was having some production issues so she wasn’t doing marketing for months until she knew her production was back on line and they were going to have new inventory. “We started consistently dropping new goods in April,” she said.

She will be starting a TikTok strategy within the next few weeks. They’ve been doing digital ads, “but were hemorrhaging money.” She stopped that and now they’re putting that budget into influencer marketing which is stronger for them. “It’s smaller micro influencers, so they’re posting for free, and we give them talking points, and they’re explaining the technology…who needs it and why you need it.”

Cole said the self-financed business is currently based in her New York City apartment with a six-person freelance team consisting of a designer and creative director and production, social media, marketing and public relations executives. She’s hoping to move into an office this fall.

She said in the last two weeks, she had sales every single day which is a huge milestone for her. “But listen, there’s been many weeks where I haven’t had a sale,” she said. But now she’s going into a heavy season where she’s doing a lot of pop-up shows, trade shows and speaking engagements. “So I’m really excited to see what is going to come out these next three months,” she said.

“I want women to feel good when they go to bed, just like you feel good when you get dressed. You should feel good going into bed when you’re about to do the most important thing for your body, which is get hopefully six to eight hours of sleep,” said Cole.