What did Victorian Women wear to Afternoon Tea? // Examining an Antique Victorian Tea Gown c. 1880

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Dr. Anne Bissonnette's article on tea gowns is available online to read for free for members of Costume Society of America. https://csoa.memberclicks.net/

More information on Aesthetic and Artistic Dress can be found at Dr. Robyne Calvert's website: https://robynecalvert.com/

Most Images used in this video were sourced from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and also Museum of Fine Art, Boston, The Hermitage, and some via WikiCommons. The Eleventh Doctor wearing a Tea Gown is a construct of my own weird imagination and terrible photoshop skills.

Man, making thumbnails for antique clothing videos is hard. 😂 Today, we're looking at a bright, bold, gorgeous and fashion forward Victorian Tea gown (c. 1880s) in my antique clothing collection. Tea gowns were worn by fashionable Victorian hostesses when they would entertain at their home for afternoon tea. It was this weird blend of public social gatherings but also intimate private affairs, thus giving space to the tea gown to have a unique sartorial place within Victorian fashion. The particular gown that we're looking at, has excellent aesthetic influences - with the watteau back, puffed and smocked sleeves, the easy fit, and the lightweight orange silk fabric. Clearly, the woman who wore this dress kept up with the trends, and seems to have fancied herself a bit of an aesthete.

So, we're going to look at her general construction, what Victorian sewing techniques we can learn from this piece? What was the woman's shape? (she was roughly 5 feet tall, with a 40 inch bust and a 30 inch waist (102/76 cm). Seeing that this gown has a particular social status connection to it, we can assume that she was known within her local society and acted as a hostess in a home large enough to entertain people. The construction is decent, but not outstanding (very much standard for Victorian dressmakers, though some extra care was taken in the original finishing of the seams). It is a princess line dress that has been mostly machine sewn. Hand stitching was done online in sections where it was required. It has a small tear and mend over her back hip, that looks like it was from the period and not a later alteration (the mending thread is the same as the embroidery thread). The dress is extremely lightweight (that silk weighs next to nothing), has no boning in the bodice, and would have been very comfortable to wear. It would have been worn with a corset, petticoats, and some sort of bum/bustle pad, but this definitely was meant to be a comfortable garment as well as a fashionable one.
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Видео What did Victorian Women wear to Afternoon Tea? // Examining an Antique Victorian Tea Gown c. 1880 канала Abby Cox