Also known as the housecoat, the dressing gown is the elegant solution to ‘what to wear around the house first thing in the morning or for post-dinner lounging’ yet has all but disappeared. Sweat pants, yoga pants or whatever other stretchy things you’ve got lying around have become the defacto lounge wear, and I do believe we could use an alternative that streamlines the figure, covering what need not show, and provide a bit of psychological lift, knowing that you have something lovely to slip into that is both forgiving and even beautiful.
I have been searching for something along these lines (though patterns from the ’40s and ’50s are to be found on Etsy if you want to whip one up on your sewing machine), to almost no avail. Women have been reduced to bathrobes of one sort or another in terrycloth or velour, or something silky and (supposedly) sexy which is just the same old trope (must everything be sexy?).
The bathrobe is just not the same thing at all. In a proper dressing gown, you should be able to slip outside in the morning and turn on the sprinkler, or sit on the deck at night, Tom Collins in hand and imagine your neighbour’s thought bubble along the lines of, ‘She always looks great – even first thing in the morning. How does she do it?’ That sort of thing.
Now that I spend most of my time working from home there is a desire and even a psychological necessity not to sink to the lowest common denominator – the yoga pant – and maintain some degree of personal style, which doesn’t need to mean discomfort which is what I largely associate with business wear.
Not to make too big a deal of it, but the bathrobe in all its colours and fabric permutations is not and will never be a housecoat, and that, my friends, just about sums up the problem with women’s clothing – lots of variety with very few real options.
Links to more
- Wonderful sewing and knitting blog: Renee and the cat’s meow
- Dressing gown sewing patterns available here:
- The Great Woman on Pinterest
THE GREAT WOMAN 