May be you are right and swooners are not sweaters
(when VN had difficulties with translation of this or that word
in his English original, he sometimes chose to change
the untranslatable object in the Russian text). It woud be not
easy to find a good Russian equivalent of "swooners" (given that they are
updated bloomers, as Carolyn suggested). The whole thing reminds me of
"swoony-balloony," as ample skirts, or "lolitas" [!], are called by the Chose
young things in Ada (chapter 39). I had problems, too, with
rendering this epithet in Russian.
Alexey