A tea gown or tea-gown is a woman's dress for informal entertaining at home. These dresses, which became popular around the mid-19th century, are characterized by unstructured lines and light fabrics. Early tea gowns were a European development influenced by Asian clothing and by European historical fashions such as 18th-century Watteau-pleats and Renaissance hanging sleeves.^{[1][need quotation to verify][2]} The Oxford English Dictionary notes the use of the phrase "tea gown" ("[a] special fashion of garment worn by girls and women at tea") from 1878.^[3]

Women, as a strict rule, never upon any circumstance would wear a traditional hat or veil whilst inside and consuming tea and cakes in mid-afternoon traditions. Part of this European sense of fashion came from Japanese kimono-etiquette.^[4]

Fashion envisaged the wearing of tea gowns without a corset or assistance from a maid; however, elegance always came first.^[5]

During the 19th century, etiquette deemed it inappropriate for women to appear in public wearing a tea gown.^[5] The dresses were intended to be worn indoors with family and close friends during a dinner party.^[5][6]

Although tea gowns were meant for midday wear, they could be worn into the evening.^[6] Women started wearing tea gowns in the evening for dinner or certain events at home with close friends and family by 1900.^[6] Tea gowns intended for day wear usually had high necks, while evening tea gowns had lower necks.^[6]

• Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics, and at Home

• Takeda, Sharon Sadako, and Kaye Durland Spilker, Fashioning Fashion: European Dress in Detail, 1700 - 1915, LACMA/Prestel USA (2010), ISBN 978-3-7913-5062-2