The Tea-Gown
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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.
From "Etiquette", 1922, by Emily Post
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Read more about "La Belle Epoque" and tea gowns here.
I would love to have lived in the era of tea gowns.
SvaraRaderaI'm not so sure - they don't look very comfortable. And on the whole, I don't think the era was very comfortable either. But I too find them lovely - and maybe I could stand to dress up once every decade....
SvaraRaderaMargaretha
I have just ordered a book from Amazon about Emily Post ... I thought the idea of the tea gown was that they were loose and all-enveloping so that women could remove their corsets and be more comfortable for taking tea before dressing formally, with corsets, for dinner.
SvaraRaderaMargaret Powling
That sounds interesting Margaret,
SvaraRaderaI don't anything about Emily Post - You have to let us know what you think about the book!
Margaretha