Tea gown
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A tea gown or 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.
- Every one knows that a tea-gown is a hybrid between a wrapper and a ball dress. It has always a train and usually long flowing sleeves; is made of rather gorgeous materials and goes on easily, and its chief use is not for wear at the tea-table so much as for dinner alone with one's family.
- It can, however, very properly be put on for tea, and if one is dining at home, kept on for dinner. Otherwise a lady is apt to take tea in whatever dress she had on for luncheon, and dress after tea for dinner.
- One does not go out to dine in a tea-gown except in the house of a member of one's family or a most intimate friend. One would wear a tea-gown in one's own house in receiving a guest to whose house one would wear a dinner dress. – Emily Post, Etiquette, 1922.
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.
[edit] External links
- Emily Post, Etiquette, 1922, at Project Gutenberg
- Surviving tea gowns from Reforming Fashion, 1850-1914, an exhibit at Ohio State University:
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