Fashion and Family History by Shrimpton Jayne;

Author:Shrimpton, Jayne;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: REFERENCE \ Genealogy & Heraldry
Publisher: Pen & Sword Books Limited
Published: 2021-01-30T00:00:00+00:00

The women seldom get new clothes. The men go to work and must be supplied, the children must be decent at school, but the mother has no need to appear in the light of day. If very badly equipped she can shop in the evening … and no’one will notice under her jacket and rather long skirt what she is wearing on her feet. Most of them have a hat, a jacket and a ‘best’ skirt to wear in the street. In the house a blouse and patched skirt under a sacking apron is the universal wear….

In the early 1800s, gentlemen often wore a loose Indian-style morning gown, traditionally termed a ‘banyan’ when indoors – a popular Georgian mode deriving from forms of eastern robe that early travellers had first encountered overseas. Precise styling and terminology changed over time, but for the upper and upper-middle classes the vogue for easy house gowns, often fashioned from luxurious imported materials, continued into the Regency era and beyond. Not only was it uncomfortable lounging at home in stiff, formal day clothes, but when fabrics were hard to care for, the shape of structured garments was easily ruined, so relaxed indoor gowns for men became customary for family time and receiving close friends at home.

Victorian and Edwardian gentlemen continued this practice, removing outdoor or office jacket, coats and stiff starched collars and donning a dressing- or wrapping-gown. Also popular from the mid-1800s was the shorter smoking jacket, styled like the regular male lounge jacket, but made in soft woollen or velvet material in rich colours like dark red, green and blue, or black, with quilted silk lining and cord trimmings. Jackets and longer gowns fashioned in exotic oriental fabrics or plush quilted velvet material were often accessorised with a Chinese- or Middle-Easternstyle tasselled ‘smoking cap’. Smoking caps and gowns or jackets were worn ostensibly to protect the clothes and hair from the aroma of cigar or cheroot smoke, but were also luxurious, offering a sense of escapism from dreary business wear. Smoking caps were unfashionable by the turn of the century but comfortable smoking jackets remained customary for casual or semi-formal wear at home in the evenings, teamed with ordinary day or evening trousers. In 1956, Austin Reed launched a modern version of the smoking jacket, the ‘Television Jacket’, in wine velour with quilted collar and cuffs.

Fashion plate detail from The Gazette of Fashion, January 1857.

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