Nightgowns

As Dickens somewhere recounts with infinite zest, we have all had the mortifying experience in a dream of making a public appearance clad with woeful inadequacy in our nightdress. This is a situation interesting to consider in relation to the period in which the dreamer is caught out in her nightdress. For instance, in The Lady's Pictorial of August 30, 1922, there appears an illustration of a garment described as "a nightie carried out in the finest linen lawn trimmed with embroidery and lace." Entirely sleeveless, with a rather ample "V" neck, enfolding the body with an effect decidedly negligee-like in appearance. This nightie (or nightgown) is not calculated to make love appear ridiculous nor is it intended to make a fool of the wearer.

Quite the opposite in fact, dressed like that today, going through Grand Central Station in London, most women would draw attention as fashion icons rather than embarrassingly caught in public in their nightwear.

Nightgowns, traditionally have been works of art. Around 1926 nightgowns reached from shoulder to ankle. By then it had become the thing to use only silken threads as fine as gossamer for the upper part. The scantier the garment was over the shoulders the more beautiful it was considered. Even white muslin nightgowns, mill shipped in small lots to those sections of the country where steampower had not yet penetrated, had parted from one-time elaborate collars.

Nightgowns today are fashion items. Incredibly delicate, ranging from the painfully simple to the overtly elaborate, trimmed with lace, comprised of thin struts and delicate ties and bows they are designed to recreate a past that was arts-inspired, beautiful, daring and yet also iconoclastic and revolutionary.

Nightgowns, as we see them now are manufactured to resemble evening dresses; to copy the most flattering aspects of classic styles. They are fashioned to make the figure appear at its best. Since they have become formally decorative they are longer than before. Cut on bias lines, molded to the body. Many could almost be worn as evening gowns – not entirely out of place in something like the UK hit TV show ‘Come Dancing’.

Dickens may have correctly identified our fear of being caught outside in our nightwear, exposing a part of our innermost self, but with the nightgowns of today such a fear is mitigated by the fact that save for some slight consciousness of the thinness of the material, a lady need not be disturbed by dreaming that she appeared in any of today’s exceedingly graceful, sweeping creations in the dining room of the Savoy at High Tea time.