# Is there a name for this item of 19th century clothing other than dressing gown? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 15, 2012, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-this-item-of-19th-century-clothing-other-than-dressing-gown/621967 "2012-05-15T04:27:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2012, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-this-item-of-19th-century-clothing-other-than-dressing-gown/621967/1 "2012-05-15T04:27:33Z")
This is an [1869 portrait](http://sandpond.org/I_M_Singer_1869.jpg) of sewing machine manufacturer Isaac Singer. You see this type of robe in lots of Victorian portraits; it’s similar to the [18th century banyan](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banyan_%28clothing%29). Is there a name for it more specific than dressing gown? It’s obviously meant to be informal AND formal (or at least expensive) at the same time. (Singer was a ladies man, to put it mildly- he had more than 20 children by at least five women- which is probably why he wanted to be remembered in pre-Hefner fancy bedwear.) ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2012, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-this-item-of-19th-century-clothing-other-than-dressing-gown/621967/2 "2012-05-15T04:56:56Z")
The link didn’t work for me. Although I found a link through Google Images, I hesitate to post it for fear of violating copyright, I will say I think that could be a smoking jacket. I’m pretty sure “dressing gown” is simply BrE for “bathrobe”. In _The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy_, mention is made of Arthur Dent traveling around the universe in his dressing gown, which he happened to still be wearing the morning he began his interstellar adventure, mere seconds before the Vogons demolished the Earth to make way for a hyperspace bypass. ---
**Author:** ![Sandra\_Battye](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sandra_battye/32/552_2.png) [@Sandra\_Battye](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sandra_Battye)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2012, 4:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-this-item-of-19th-century-clothing-other-than-dressing-gown/621967/3 "2012-05-15T04:58:05Z")
[Smoking Jacket](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoking_jacket) ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2012, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-this-item-of-19th-century-clothing-other-than-dressing-gown/621967/4 "2012-05-15T20:40:30Z")
Thanks. I always thought smoking jackets were just thigh length coats, but apparently the term can apply to robe length as well. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2012, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-this-item-of-19th-century-clothing-other-than-dressing-gown/621967/5 "2012-05-15T20:54:43Z")
The French name _robe de chambre_ for this garment was often used in English descriptions. Lise Schreier’s 2010 article “Portrait de l’artiste en robe de chambre, 1830-1870” (_Romance Studies_, Volume 28, Number 4, November 2010 , pp. 279-295) discusses why the hell 19th-century society decided it was a good idea for portraits to show guys in their bathrobes: > [@](#): > > This essay shows how and why the masculine dressing gown became ubiquitous in literary documents and in visual imagery between 1830 and 1870. This article of clothing associated with the Orient was the garment of choice for France’s most celebrated writers, such as Balzac and Flaubert. It also appeared in an extraordinary number of fashion plates, caricatures, short stories, and novels. I analyse the proliferation of this accessory in nineteenth-century French cultural production in its relation both to a rising material culture and a developing aesthetics of modernity. I also show that instant recognition by a growing consuming public of male artists clothed in the talismanic robe de chambre attested to its new performative power. Ultimately, I argue that the elaborate semiotic system produced by the robe de chambre, as well as its shifting value between 1830 and 1870, epitomizes the changing social status of artists in nineteenth-century France. I too would tend to reserve “smoking jacket” for the shorter garments, though I know that convention wasn’t universally adhered to. ---
**Author:** ![Nametag](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nametag/32/406_2.png) [@Nametag](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nametag)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2012, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-this-item-of-19th-century-clothing-other-than-dressing-gown/621967/6 "2012-05-16T02:53:33Z")
It’s a dressing gown. The reason that “smoking jacket” exists as a phrase is to describe the short lounging jacket that evolved from the dressing gown. Curiously, I learned in French class that the French call a tuxedo “un smoking.”