The History of Smocking Dresses
Traditional hand smocking dress, Garments during this time were simply cut, and pleating or gathering was used to shape the garment and control the fullness of the fabric. Smocking is essentially embroidery on pleated fabric. The art form that we traditionally think of as Smocking is primarily from The United Kingdom, is specifically known as English Smocking, and has been practiced in its current form for over 300 years. However, some form of stitching on pleated fabric, or smocking, can be seen all over Europe in paintings as old as the 1400s. Garments during this time were simply cut, and pleating or gathering was used to shape the garment and control the fullness of the fabric. Various forms of embroidery were then used to hold the pleating and provide a form of decoration. The resulting pleating could be elastic or non-elastic depending on the construction method chosen.
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Just as the smock was loosing favor as an outer garment for men, women’s fashion was to come to the rescue! At the same time, women’s fashion was rejecting the corset, primarily for health reasons, and embracing a looser, flowing style of dress. Smocking worked perfectly to help control the fullness!
By 1924, Mrs. J.D. Rolleston, states in The Embroideress, that smocking was applied “almost exclusively to garments worn by artists and children, the agricultural laborer and the shepherd having abandoned their beautiful smocks altogether, but they have left us a legacy of which we should be proud and which should form the basis and inspiration of all our modern smocking.”With WWI styles changed and while smocking was still depicted, the styles were now simpler, and the Liberty 1916 catalog showed smocking used in working garments and children’s clothes.
Smocking on women’s blouses and children’s outfits was extremely popular in the 1920s and 30s, again with Liberty leading the way. According to the Book of Smocking by Diana Keay, “it was the ambition of every mother to dress her daughter in a tana lawn dress with rich deep smocking.
In this painting called Snowballing by John Morgan from 1865, the two boys in the center of the picture are wearing smocks rolled up and tucked in their pants so they can more easily move during the fight! By the end of the 1800s the popularity of the smock as a practical garment for country men was declining, Gertrude Jekyll wrote in Old West Surrey (1904) that “The old carter’s smock-frock or round frock, still lingering, but on its way to becoming extinct…no better thing has ever been devised for any kind of outdoor wear that admits of the use of an outer garment. It turns an astonishing amount of wet.”
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The Workwoman’s Guide describes the smock as “made of strong linen…and the biassing (smocking) upon it is worked with the strongest glazed thread or cotton that can be procured…The shoulders and wrists as well as the back are biassed with strong, glazed thread in various patterns…” Numerous references in english literature, (including Thomas Hardy in Far From the Madding Crowd) and paintings from the time refer to these garments,
Just as the smock was loosing favor as an outer garment for men, women’s fashion was to come to the rescue! At the same time, women’s fashion was rejecting the corset, primarily for health reasons, and embracing a looser, flowing style of dress. Smocking worked perfectly to help control the fullness!
Liberty, which was founded in 1875, began to offer a dressmaking service and its 1894 fashion catalog showed several designs that included smocking.` In 1887, Weldon’s published the first of four books on Practical Smocking stating: “When the rage for artistic dressing set in a few years ago, smocking was revived and brought into requisition for the ornamentation of ladies and children’s summer costumes, for lawn-tennis dresses and holland blouses; and so greatly has it increased in favour that it is now a recognized style of fashionable dress.” Inspired
With WWI styles changed and while smocking was still depicted, the styles were now simpler, and the Liberty 1916 catalog showed smocking used in working garments and children’s clothes. By 1924, Mrs. J.D. Rolleston, states in The Embroideress, that smocking was applied “almost exclusively to garments worn by artists and children, the agricultural laborer and the shepherd having abandoned their beautiful smocks altogether, but they have left us a legacy of which we should be proud and which should form the basis and inspiration of all our modern smocking.”
Smocking on women’s blouses and children’s outfits was extremely popular in the 1920s and 30s, again with Liberty leading the way. According to the Book of Smocking by Diana Keay, “it was the ambition of every mother to dress her daughter in a tana lawn dress with rich deep smocking.”
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