About the Look

T his tea gown epitomizes the aesthetic movement of the late nineteenth-century in several ways.

It is high-necked, with decorative ribbons protruding from the collar (Fig. 1). It features smocking that begins at the collar and continues to the shoulders. A large bow of the same fabric decorates the chest. The long, puffed sleeves are gathered at the shoulder-seams and around the wrists, producing a ruffle effect. The back of the gown resembles the so-called Watteau (or box) pleats (Fig. 2) characteristic of eighteenth-century robes à la française.

The main dress fabric is a green silk taffeta, lined in magenta (as is visible at the cuffs). Embroidered lilies and natural forms serve as embellishments throughout the body of the garment. Large, sinuous lilies in an asymmetrical design climb up the front of the gown stopping at the bust. They also decorate the ribbon details, as well as the top of the Watteau-pleated back.

There is no label to identify the maker of this tea gown. However, based on the smocking, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which owns the dress, believes the gown may be attributed to the British department store Liberty & Co, which was associated with the commercial production of 19th-century dress reform garments, as will be discussed below.

T his tea gown is dated to the turn of the century, ca. 1898–1901. Tea gowns were worn indoors for five-o-clock tea, and enjoyed immense popularity in England and France from the late 1870s through the first decade of the twentieth century (Bissonnette 271-2). They were often designed to be, or at least to appear, comfortable as they were typically loose at the waist and thus did not require corsetry to achieve the desired silhouette.  When tea was first introduced to Europe in the early seventeenth century, it was incredibly valuable and exotic, and reserved for the elite classes (Bissonnette 271). While tea had certainly been democratized by the nineteenth century, the highly ritualized and exclusive social event of “teatime” appealed to the aspirations of the middle class (Bissonnette 271).

Teatime originated not only the tea gown, but also heavily influenced interior spaces – namely the parlor room (Bissonnette 271). Although teatime occurred in private homes, they were somewhat public events. Therefore, parlors were essentially “public stages,” and the hostess would take great care to display her artistic taste (Bissonnette 271). It was common for the interior decoration of a late-nineteenth-century parlor to be fashionably artistic and exotic, and the hostess’ tea gown ideally matched the interior (Bissonnette 271). Mrs. Eliza Haweis wrote about this trend in the British ladies’ magazine The Queen in 1878:

“A great change has come over the style of English dressing within the last, say, five years. The world of artists first started the idea of their wives and daughters dressing in harmony with [their] surroundings, and thence the grandes dames of fashion were influenced.” (Cullen 139–140)

Tea gowns were an element of Aesthetic dress, associated with pioneers of the Aesthetic movement (Cullen 7-9). One such pioneer was Arthur Lasenby Liberty, who founded Liberty & Co. in 1875 (Ashmore 479). Liberty & Co. was a renowned London department store that initially specialized in exotic handmade goods from what was then called the Middle and Far East (Ashmore 479). While the business was originally based on imports, eventually Liberty began producing their own Eastern-inspired fabrics (Fig. 3), and opened a dressmaking department in 1884 (Fig. 4) (Cullen 7-9). Liberty’s designs became famous for not requiring the corsetry otherwise expected of Victorian women.

Another designer and early dress reformer was Henry Van de Velde, who in 1902 published an article titled “Das neue Kunst-Prinzip in der modernen Frauen-Kleidung” (“The New Art Principle in Modern Women’s Clothing”) in the magazine Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration (German Art and Decoration). In photographs accompanying the article, several garments have the same silhouette as our tea gown (Fig. 5).

At the same time, this tea gown also reflects elements of the Art Nouveau movement. The embroidered lily motifs and their asymmetrical design are in line with the modern Art Nouveau style, which favored abstracted floral patterns and flattened pictorial space. In fact, no artistic movement better encompasses the nineteenth-century taste for eclecticism and mixing of styles than Art Nouveau. Starting around 1895, the Art Nouveau design movement was a “pan-European phenomenon” that celebrated newness and modernity while also borrowing from revival movements and exoticism (Geczy 115). In Fashion and Orientalism, Adam Geczy described it in this way:

“Art nouveau is the modern version of latter-day chinoiserie, this time mixing eighteenth-century rococo (said to come from rocaille, meaning stonework) with the new Japanese decorative universe; both styles were liberal interpreters of the natural world.” (115)

The embroidered lilies asymmetrically climbing up the front of the tea gown express some of the aesthetic values of Art Nouveau. It is very typical for floral designs in the Art Nouveau style to heavily incorporate “rhythmically swaying stalks” amongst large floral blooms (see Fig. 11) (Stavenow-Hidemark 874). Though the embroidery on the green silk tea gown is perhaps closer in style to that favored by the earlier Arts & Crafts movement that Art Nouveau assimilated. The embroidered lilies resembles those on an embroidered pillow cover (Fig. 12), circa 1876–1877, associated with the Arts and Crafts movement..

In the artistic exuberance of the turn of the twentieth century, dress commonly drew upon myriad of design influences – as this tea gown attests. Thus, a garment designed intended to be relatively informal also made a complex aesthetic statement about wearer, her tastes, and her fashionability.