Robe à l’Anglaise (English-style gown), about 1775–1780
The robe à l’anglaise (also called a nightgown, although it had nothing to do with nightwear and could be worn for both day and evening) has a back bodice made from a panel of fabric in the center, which is stitched down into curved pleats, avoiding wasteful cutting and piecing. The mantua-maker draped the bodice pattern, front and back, on the customer as she stood in her stays (corset). The center-back bodice panel continues without a waist seam into the skirt; additional rectangular skirt panels, usually sewn selvage to selvage, extend on each side around to the front. The remainder of the bodice is pieced.
All forms of eighteenth-century dress—the robe à l’anglaise, the robe à la française, and earlier forms of the mantua—were patterned with similar strategies to minimize cutting and wasting the fabric, which also conveniently tended to display the textiles’ rich colors and weaves. This dress dates to the last years of the robe à l’anglaise’s popularity. Bodices made with four cut pieces in the back were introduced in the late 1770s. After the two forms coexisted for a while, the pieced bodice replaced the pleated, making home dressmaking less challenging and leading to flat patterning.
Silk brocade robe à l’anglaise, made in America, DAR Museum 2006.23.