"Sacque" is just French for "sack," and was merely spelled differently
when more elegance was wanted. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, it
was a general term describing a loose-fitting garment, whether a man's
sack coat, a woman's sacque paletot, a woman's dressing sacque/sack, and
so on. If the term was used alone, rather than as an adjective, eople
were expected to know from context what kind of sacque/sack was being
referred to.
Generally, the degree of embellishment of dressing sacks, or any other
lingerie garment, depended largely on the taste and budget of the
wearer. Dressing saques were often highly embellished, and were worn as
a kind of house jacket over a petticoat, within the family, in the
morning before the woman got fully dressed and ready to meet the public.
There is a garment that looks like a hip-length nightgown, sometimes
very prettily trimmed, that appears fairly often in Victorian fashion
magazines. I have only seen it illustrated flat on a page, not as worn
with other garments. I am not entirely sure, offhand, what it is for.
It might be a short nightgown, and it might be another kind of dressing
sack. It might even be that the Victorians were still sometimes going to
bed in their chemises and adding a kind of jacket with a higher neck and
long sleeves as a top layer, which was common in the early 19th century.
However, without a picture, it's impossible to what the garment under
discussion actually is.
Fran
Lavolta Press
www.lavoltapress.com
www.facebook.com/LavoltaPress
On 9/14/2011 11:29 AM, Janyce Hill wrote:
In later years the word "sacque" comes up freqently in the french fashion
journals I have. Most often under the term "dressing sacque" or "combing
sacque". From the illustrations that are in the journals the dressing
sacque is a long loose gown that falls from the shoulders, meant to be worn
after undergarments are put on - but before the actual dress or other outer
garment was put on. One supposes that if you were puttering around in your
bedroom before finishing dressing - you'd slip one of these on. In the
pictures that I looked at, they were all very plain and without
embellishment - as opposed to "dressing gowns" which are highly embellished
in the illustrations.
The "combing sacque" is a garment that is only waist-length, and fastenes at
the center front neckline. These are mostly plain, but sometimes have a
little inserted lace or a yoke. According to the descriptions, they were
meant to be put on after you were dressed, and while you were combing or
brushing your hair. Their purpose seems to be to prevent shed hair from
ending up on the clothing you were wearing out in public.
I suspect that this usage (1890 - 1903) is probably derived from your older
garments.
Janyce Hill
Vintage Pattern
Lending Library
www.vpll.org
On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 11:11 AM, Laura Rubin<[email protected]>wrote:
The first thing that comes to mind is actually the term "smock", in
the sense of a British farmer's smock - the overgarment that protects
their normal clothes from rough work. Any chance you could post a
picture for us to look at?
-Laura
Message: 12
Date: Wed, 14 Sep 2011 08:29:50 -0700 (PDT)
From: "WorkroomButtons.com"<[email protected]>
To: Historical Costume<[email protected]>
Subject: [h-cost] Need information on "sacque" garments (NOT the
dress)
Message-ID:
<[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Back at the Reed Homestead... we are moving on to the next pile --
stacks and stacks of shirt-like garments with no closures (other than
a few with ties at the neck).
We hired a woman in 1995 to start pulling clothing literally out of
garbage bags and start cataloging. (Sadly, we still have pieces from
1809 still in garbage bags -- yes, the black plastic kind.)? She
called these shirt-like garments "sacques" and this is want she wrote
about them...
"...I would like someone after me to write the word "sacque" which is
what we're going to use for the generic term.? A sacque is a garment
which hangs from the shoulder down without interruption, without
darts, without a waist seam, so a man's sacque coat is one that was
not cut in at the waist.? And that seems to be a generic form for this
style if garment, no matter how it's being used, but as I said before
and you got on the VCR I think, these can be used as a working garment
with a skirt, held in place with an apron.? They can be used as a
short nightgown for hot weather and when somebody is ill and is using
a bedpan.? They can be used over your dress when you're doing your
hair and that's probably about it.? Oh, yes, and the other thing is
for maternity, when it's an expandable top for when you're pregnant
and obviously can be used for nursing as well.? And nobody has as many
as you have."
We have attempted to locate information about this type of garment,
but clearly we're looking in the wrong places because we're coming up
empty. We can find "saques" certainly but they don't look like ours.
Any ideas?
Dede O'Hair
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