The gown, which was a major component of men’s wear in the sixteenth century, had moved in two different directions by the beginning of the seventeenth century. On the one hand it was a designator of occupation, becoming the wear of the legal, academic, and medical professions, and being worn by mayors, aldermen and burgesses of towns. On the other hand, it became the nightgown, a loose gown worn informally within the house, as can be seen in Samuel Pepys comment “Up, and in my night gowne, cap and neckcloth, undressed all day long.” (1 p. 30 July 1665)
 |
|
Figure 1: Vermeer. The Geographer. 1669. Staedel Museum, Frankfurt
|
A connection was also assumed between the wearing of a nightgown, and having a scholarly disposition. Both Vermeer’s Astronomer (c.1668) and his Geographer (1669) [Figure 1] are depicted wearing loose gowns. By the eighteenth century this relationship causes Benjamin Rush (1746 –1813) to write, “Loose dresses contribute to the easy and vigorous exercise of the faculties of the mind. This remark is so obvious, and so generally known, that we find studious men are always painted in gowns, when they are seated in their libraries” (2) In 1666 Pepys had his portrait painted by John Hales (Hayls, 1600?-1679) wearing a gown, not one of his own, but an Indian gown which he had hired for the purpose. (1 p. March)
Nightgowns usually belonged to members of the upper and, possibly, middling classes. When the yeoman George Miller left a nightgown in his 1613 will he pointed out how he had obtained it, “unto Thomas Wynn gent[leman] the night gowne which was sometime my master Sir Charles Morison’s” (3 p. 54) In 1639 the clothes of the rich Bristol merchant, Nicholas Meredith were in total worth £25, only three items were mentioned specifically, two gowns and a nightgown, followed by “all his wearing apparrell both wollen & Lynnen.” (4 p. 112)