Sack-back gown
The sack-back gown was a women's fashion of the 18th century.
At the beginning of the century, the sack-back gown was a very informal style of dress. At its most informal, it was unfitted both front and back and called a sacque, contouche, or robe battante. By the 1770s the sack-back gown was second only to court dress in its formality. This style of gown had fabric at the back arranged in box pleats which fell loose from the shoulder to the floor with a slight train. In front, the gown was open, showing off a decorative stomacher and petticoat. It would have been worn with a wide square hoop or panniers under the petticoat. Scalloped ruffles often trimmed elbow-length sleeves, which were worn with separate frills called engageantes.
The loose box pleats which are a feature of this style are sometimes called Watteau pleats from their appearance in the paintings of Antoine Watteau. The various Watteau terms, such as Watteau pleat, Watteau back, Watteau gown etc., date from the mid-19th century rather than reflecting authentic 18th century terminology, and normally describe 19th and 20th century revivals of the sack-back.
Notable wearers
A popular story, traced back to the correspondence of Élisabeth Charlotte d'Orléans, Duchess d'Orléans, is that the earliest form of the sack-back gown, the robe battante, was invented as maternity clothing in the 1670s by Louis XIV's mistress to conceal her clandestine pregnancies. However people would comment: "Madame de Montespan has put on her robe battante, therefore she must be pregnant.
Brief
The sack, or sacque, gown evolved from a very informal dress of the late seventeenth century into a formal dress by the mid-eighteenth century. The sack gown was first a loose, tent-like robe worn in the home or by pregnant women. The volume of the gown came from gathers near the shoulders and along the back. The front of the gown skirt was worn either open in the front to reveal a petticoat or stitched closed from the waist down to the hemline. As the century continued, these gowns became more formal, featuring fitted bodices, long full skirts, and a long box-pleated piece of fabric hanging from neck to ankles along their backs. These dresses were so often depicted in the paintings of French painter Antoine Watteau (1684–1721), the man who created the Rococo painting style that emphasized romantic love, that the pleats in back took his name: Watteau pleats. As the dresses became more fitted through the bodice, the gown came to be known as the robe à l'anglaise. The robe à l'anglaise was especially popular in England (anglaise means English in French) and featured a many-pieced bodice with a low neckline. The sack gown went out of style by the end of the century when Greek inspired dresses, such as the robe en chemise, became popular.
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