What Is the Difference Between After Five & Tea Length Dresses?
In the early 1920s, prosperous economy and the rise of jazz music and speakeasies gave birth to an entirely new way of socializing: the cocktail hour. For women, it created a need for a new way of dressing up that was too formal for a casual day dress but too laid-back for a ballgown. The "cocktail dress," as designers dubbed it, came in different lengths and styles; whether tea-length, ballerina-length, or "after-five," it meant a woman looked sophisticated and polished with just a hint of sass.
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History
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While a tea-length dress suggests demurely sipping darjeeling, the term actually came about from a style of dress popular at the turn of the century, which, according to Emily Post, resembled more a ballgown than a cocktail dress. With sleeves and a train, women often wore it for casual dinners at home.
Birth of the Tea Dress
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When the cocktail hour began to flourish in the 1920s, "tea dress" came to refer to cocktail dress with a skirt length somewhere below the knee but above the ankle, whether or not it was worn to sip tea. "Tea-length" these days nearly always means a dress falling just below the knee. Fitting with their daytime roots, tea dresses are often found in ligher fabrics like cotton and wool gabardine, and are suitable for dressy daytime events such as weddings. Whimsical patterns, florals and pastels are common.
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The Ballerina Dress
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A ballerina length, on the other hand, falls to the ankle, and takes its name from the costumes worn by prima ballerinas. Though similar to the type of more casual "dancing costumes" made during the first part of the 20th century, since the 1980s, dresses of ballerina length are most often designated ballgowns.
The "After-Five"
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"After five" refers to the traditional cocktail hour of five o'clock, and is more of a colloqiualism than a formal term. Unlike a tea dress, which indicated a specific length of skirt, the "after five" indicates no specific skirt length. Thus, "after five" dresses, at whatever length, might mean the little black dress made famous by Coco Chanel, or one made from more sumptous fabrics, such as silk or satin.
Fun Fact
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Coco Chanel invented the "little black dress," in 1926, to allow women to transition seamlessly from teatime to evening, and the style remains perennially popular to this day.
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- Photo Credit Image by Flickr.com, courtesy of T I M O Image by Flickr.com, courtesy of Steve Weaver Image by Flickr.com, courtesy of Sherrie Thai
