SLIP INTO A TEA GOWN
Why does Ella always seem to end up in a tea-gown?
It’s a reasonable question, considering we see her in one at some point in most of the books. Always in her favorite purple shades: lacy and lilac, violet crepe de chine with ribbon trim, lavender wool with embroidery on a cold day. In A FATAL FIRST NIGHT, her singing partner Marie even turns up in one too, in her favorite color, sky blue.
Reporter Hetty is in a suit in that scene, and Ella feels sorry for her.
So what’s so great about a tea-gown?
It’s simple: a tea-gown enabled a woman to be decently dressed without wearing a corset. Even our very modern ladies, and singers like Ella and Marie, would never dream of leaving the house without wearing stays.
Corsets have been compared to armor, and with good reason. I wore one for a musical production once, and I had a hard time getting my breath to walk across the stage, never mind sing, not that I’m much of a singer, anyhow. When you’re wearing one, even if it’s not laced especially tightly, there is no moment, or way you can move, that you aren’t aware of it.
More, they’re especially uncomfortable when you sit down. The late-19th century models weren’t as long-lined as the ones that came a bit later, so they probably were a little less horrible to sit in, but not by much.
So it makes sense that women wanted a reasonably respectable garment to wear around the house that didn’t require the uncomfortable underpinnings. Enter the tea-gown. Always loose in the waist, often not fitted anywhere but the shoulders and possibly sleeves, it could be anything from simple to fanciful, but it always gave women much-needed room to breathe in private.
Tea-gowns, it’s important to note here, were for women of at least some means. They were most popular among the upper crust, where a lady would change out of her day dress into a tea-gown for a relaxing afternoon on her chaise longue before donning a glittering evening creation for whatever the night might bring. But they were also popular house wear among “respectable” women, who immediately saw the appeal of a comfortable, yet attractive, house outfit.
Our respectable ladies would not be interested in this, but some of those society matrons discovered other uses for the tea-gown and the afternoon break. By their heyday in the Edwardian Era, tea-gowns were associated with illicit assignations. The idea, we’re told, is that the tea-gown made such activities far more pleasant than a conventional corseted costume.
So the tea-gown also has a little flair of the naughty about it. Ella and Marie are not unaware of this, but they’re also not about to pass up a chance to relax in a pretty dress. Marie, in case you’re wondering, wears that sky-blue gown because it’s late at night at a friend’s house. It’s not really proper, but since it’s “in the family,” it’s not really improper, either.
Tea-gowns, by the way, were still with us well into the 1970s, under a less elevated name, and in far less elegant form. Those little cotton housedresses that Edith Bunker and other sitcom housewives wore were nothing but a scruffy descendant of the tea-gown.
I’ll take the crepe de chine any day.
Got a Throwback Thursday idea? Drop it in the comments!
It’s a reasonable question, considering we see her in one at some point in most of the books. Always in her favorite purple shades: lacy and lilac, violet crepe de chine with ribbon trim, lavender wool with embroidery on a cold day. In A FATAL FIRST NIGHT, her singing partner Marie even turns up in one too, in her favorite color, sky blue.
Reporter Hetty is in a suit in that scene, and Ella feels sorry for her.
So what’s so great about a tea-gown?
It’s simple: a tea-gown enabled a woman to be decently dressed without wearing a corset. Even our very modern ladies, and singers like Ella and Marie, would never dream of leaving the house without wearing stays.
Corsets have been compared to armor, and with good reason. I wore one for a musical production once, and I had a hard time getting my breath to walk across the stage, never mind sing, not that I’m much of a singer, anyhow. When you’re wearing one, even if it’s not laced especially tightly, there is no moment, or way you can move, that you aren’t aware of it.
More, they’re especially uncomfortable when you sit down. The late-19th century models weren’t as long-lined as the ones that came a bit later, so they probably were a little less horrible to sit in, but not by much.
So it makes sense that women wanted a reasonably respectable garment to wear around the house that didn’t require the uncomfortable underpinnings. Enter the tea-gown. Always loose in the waist, often not fitted anywhere but the shoulders and possibly sleeves, it could be anything from simple to fanciful, but it always gave women much-needed room to breathe in private.
Tea-gowns, it’s important to note here, were for women of at least some means. They were most popular among the upper crust, where a lady would change out of her day dress into a tea-gown for a relaxing afternoon on her chaise longue before donning a glittering evening creation for whatever the night might bring. But they were also popular house wear among “respectable” women, who immediately saw the appeal of a comfortable, yet attractive, house outfit.
Our respectable ladies would not be interested in this, but some of those society matrons discovered other uses for the tea-gown and the afternoon break. By their heyday in the Edwardian Era, tea-gowns were associated with illicit assignations. The idea, we’re told, is that the tea-gown made such activities far more pleasant than a conventional corseted costume.
So the tea-gown also has a little flair of the naughty about it. Ella and Marie are not unaware of this, but they’re also not about to pass up a chance to relax in a pretty dress. Marie, in case you’re wondering, wears that sky-blue gown because it’s late at night at a friend’s house. It’s not really proper, but since it’s “in the family,” it’s not really improper, either.
Tea-gowns, by the way, were still with us well into the 1970s, under a less elevated name, and in far less elegant form. Those little cotton housedresses that Edith Bunker and other sitcom housewives wore were nothing but a scruffy descendant of the tea-gown.
I’ll take the crepe de chine any day.
Got a Throwback Thursday idea? Drop it in the comments!
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