Tea Gown, House of WorthFrance, 1910Met Museum Every one knows that a tea-gown is a hybrid between a

Tea Gown, House of Worth

France, 1910

Met Museum

Every one knows that a tea-gown is a hybrid between a wrapper and a ball dress. It has always a train and usually long flowing sleeves; is made of rather gorgeous materials and goes on easily, and its chief use is not for wear at the tea-table so much as for dinner alone with one’s family. It can, however, very properly be put on for tea, and if one is dining at home, kept on for dinner. Otherwise a lady is apt to take tea in whatever dress she had on for luncheon, and dress after tea for dinner. One does not go out to dine in a tea-gown except in the house of a member of one’s family or a most intimate friend. One would wear a tea-gown in one’s own house in receiving a guest to whose house one would wear a dinner dress. 

–Emily Post, Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics, and at Home, 1922.