Party Dress or Hostess Gown? A Lost Style at Augusta Auctions

One of the interesting things about fashion is how some types of garments or accessories fall our of our style vocabulary. See decorative dress clips, fanged and hinged in order to sit on the edge of a neckline or even a sleeve hem, for example. Clips once came in diamonds or in rhinestones, but now we find them only in antique stores and vintage shops.

Then. there is the hostess gown. Mary Brooks Picken defines in her The Language of Fashion dictionary from 1939 as “usually, formalized negligee simulating a dress” or less usually “formal lounging pajamas.“ These items were worn only at home, but when guests were present. Obviously, these were intimate friends, yet the occasion was more formal, such an a special brunch, or a quiet evening party.

Now, it is easy to see how the peach crepe dress with a standing shawl collar and interesting pleats below the shoulder line qualifies as a hostess gown. The coloring, the short sleeves, and the softness of the garment seem to say negligee, while the rhinestone buckle seems to say “party!”

The fuschia crepe may be a hostess gown, although there is something so military about the beadwork which shows up as epaulets that one cannot imagine it as a negligee. True, there is softness in the gathers below the bust, at the waistline of the skirt and in the gathered bishop sleeves. But there is something about those beads marching along the shoulders as well as along the V-neckline, and the cuffs, and the edges of the fake pockets that makes me see it more as a party dress. Europe had been at war since 1939, and had been militarizing before then, so features borrowed from men’s military grab, like epaulets were borrowed for women’s fashion. The 1940s always saw tailored suits and dresses with large shoulder pads, again borrowed from men, but there always remained some draped looks for women through the war years.