Clothing etymology can be complex and the familiar garment combining body/bodice and skirt has been called variously a gown, kirtle, dress and frock. By the early-Middle Ages the word ‘gown’ (from Latin gunna) denoted a T-shaped garment usually worn to the knee by labouring men, longer by women. The medieval upper classes displayed their wealth and status in a sweeping floor-length gown or ‘kirtle’ (from Old English cyrtel) of costly fabric and fur. Male gowns were worn in Tudor England over doublet and hose, but from the late 1500s disappeared from regular daywear, a long, stately gown thereafter becoming an archaic garment representing members of the Church, academia, the professions and offices of state.

As men adopted breeches in the 1600s, the gown became strictly a female garment and usually comprised a fitted bodice hand-stitched onto a matching skirt, presenting a unified effect. Styles varied considerably over time and were shaped by a succession of artificial under-structures, from hoops to crinolines and bustles. During the 18th century the formal gown or robe (fashionable French term) often featured an open-fronted skirt displaying a contrasting skirt (petticoat) underneath; meanwhile a short or hitched-up over-gown was layered over a plain skirt by working women – a practical mode called, confusingly, the ‘bedgown’.

In general, the wider population wore functional gowns of locally-sourced linen, sturdy woollen cloth or mixed textiles such as ‘linsey-woolsey’, according to the season, while the privileged elite favoured superior English woollen broadcloth and fine silks and velvets. Before 1800, the new material, cotton, was being utilised both for diaphanous white muslin neo-classical gowns and for cheaper colourful cotton ‘washing gowns.’

Gowns remained floor-length throughout the Victorian era, shifting forms, fabrics and colours reflecting myriad fashion changes and ornate styles aided by the sewing machine. Sometimes the words ‘dress’ or ‘frock’ were used and from the early-1900s when hemlines rose and separate skirts and blouses became usual, ‘gown’ increasingly denoted a formal one-piece garment, especially floor-length evening wear. A lighter, shorter, more relaxed daytime version was generally called a dress or frock – even a ‘knockabout frock’ – and after WW1 was increasingly fashioned from synthetic fabrics. ‘Frock’ is now an outmoded term but ‘dress’ remains current and we still admire an elegant, formal ‘gown’ for weddings, balls and special functions.