The robe à la française, known in English as the sack-back gown, was the most characteristic formal dress of the eighteenth century. From behind, its signature was unmistakable: two deep box pleats, stitched down only at the neckline, fell free from the shoulders to the hem in a graceful train-like sweep. Those flowing pleats are still called Watteau pleats, after the painter Antoine Watteau, who depicted their loose ancestors in the early 1700s.
Developed from the informal mantua and sack of the early century — the world of 1700–1750 fashion — the gown became, by the 1740s, the standard of elegance across Europe and America, dominating 1750–1795 fashion at court and in the ballroom.
Construction: Pleats, Paniers, and the Stomacher
The back pleats were the engineering of the gown. Fabric was folded into box pleats at the back neck and released to flow over the side hoops, called paniers, that held the skirt out wide and flat at front and back. The front of the bodice, by contrast, fitted the body over stays, and the open front of the gown displayed a decorated triangular stomacher and a matching petticoat.
Robings — bands of gathered or pleated trim edging the front opening — and sleeve ruffles of lace or gauze completed the effect. Because the pleats consumed a great width of silk, a robe à la française was a conspicuous statement of wealth, especially in the great floral brocades woven at Lyon and Spitalfields.
Who Wore It
This was the gown of formal life: court presentations, balls, the opera, and grand visiting. Madame de Pompadour and Marie Antoinette were painted in versions of it, and every woman with social ambitions owned at least one, remade and retrimmed as fabrics allowed. In less extreme widths it served for church and formal dinners throughout polite society.
Decline and Echoes
The sack back survived remarkably long, but by the late 1770s narrower silhouettes — the close-bodied anglaise and then the muslin chemise — made its pleats and paniers look old-fashioned, and by the 1780s it had retreated to court dress and older wearers.
Its afterlife in couture is distinguished: the free-falling back inspired elements of Balenciaga's sack line of 1957, back-draped evening gowns, and bridal trains cut to fall from the shoulders. The Watteau train on a modern gown is the robe à la française remembered.
Common Questions
- Why is it called a sack-back gown?
- Because the back pleats hang loose and full from the shoulders like a sack, rather than being fitted to the body. In French the style is the robe a la francaise, the French-style gown.
- What are Watteau pleats?
- The pair of deep box pleats stitched at the back neckline of the gown and falling free to the hem. They are named for the artist Antoine Watteau, who painted similar flowing gowns in the early 1700s.
- What held the skirt out so wide?
- Paniers, hooped understructures of cane or whalebone worn at the hips, held the skirt wide at the sides while keeping it comparatively flat at the front and back.