Clothing Definitions — definitions of garments and clothing terms from Apparel Search
A tea gown is a woman's at-home dress of the late 19th to mid-20th centuries characterized by unstructured lines, light fabrics and frothy or feminine detail. Emily Post's Etiquette of 1922 describes it as a hybrid between a wrapper and a ball dress: it always has a train and usually long flowing sleeves, is made of rather gorgeous materials and goes on easily, and its chief use is not for the tea-table so much as for dinner alone with one's family. In contemporary usage, any flowing dress of sheer or translucent fabric, in pastel colours, mid-calf to ankle length, may be called a tea gown.
In contemporary usage, any flowing dress of sheer or translucent fabric, in pastel colors, mid-calf to ankle-length, may be called a tea gown.
| The above article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/tea_gown). 1/14/06 |
The tea gown existed because the formal wardrobe of its era was genuinely restrictive: structured, boned and laced dresses were the price of appearing dressed, and the hours at home still expected a lady to receive family and intimates looking finished. The tea gown split the difference. Unstructured lines meant no rigid foundation; gorgeous materials, a train and flowing sleeves meant it still read as an elegant dress rather than undress. It went on easily, a practical mercy, and it could carry a woman from afternoon tea to a family dinner without a change. Garments that solve a social problem this precisely tend to last, and the tea gown held its place for decades.
Emily Post's rules, quoted in the definition, show how finely occasion dress was graded: the same woman wore one dress to take tea in her own house, another to dine at a friend's, and judged her guest's standing by which house rules applied. The tea gown's boundary, home and intimates only, was its meaning, a signal of relaxed intimacy rather than public formality. Modern tea-length and tea gown styles borrow the romance of that world, flowing fabrics, pastel colours, ankle lengths, while discarding the rulebook: today the name describes a look, not a permitted place.
Unstructured lines, light fabrics and frothy, feminine detail, in a woman's at-home dress of the late 19th to mid-20th centuries. Emily Post adds the classic details: a tea gown always has a train, usually has long flowing sleeves, is made of rather gorgeous materials, and goes on easily.
At home: for tea, and kept on for dinner with one's family. A lady did not go out to dine in a tea gown except in the house of a family member or a most intimate friend, and she wore one in her own house to receive a guest to whose house she would herself wear a dinner dress.
In contemporary usage, any flowing dress of sheer or translucent fabric, in pastel colours, mid-calf to ankle length, may be called a tea gown. The modern usage keeps the softness and flow of the historical garment without its etiquette rules.