1790s Round Gown

- March 04, 2026

The transitional era of the 1790s is one of my favorite historical fashion eras. They were trying all kinds of things, and silhouettes could be a little unexpected. I've tried to make a gown from this era before, but ran into some issues and ended up repurposing the fabric for something else altogether due to unsuitability. I'll be revisiting that 1795 round gown in the future, hopefully this next summer.

Jane Austen's 250th birthday (a few weeks ago as of the time of starting this post) put me in a Regency kind of mood. I had a lot of thoughts, including some later Regency looks, more like what we tend to see in film adaptations of Austen's works, but after doing some deep dives for inspiration, I found that the printed cotton and linen gowns of the later 1790s and early 1800s were really speaking to me. I had a few yards of Colonial Williamsburg's "Brandied Raisin" cotton in my stash, and it was reminiscent enough of several gowns that I saw in my research that the idea felt right. I decided to go simple, which will allow me to accessorize with more variety, and drew my construction inspiration from this 1797 gown, sold early last year (2025) by Kerry Taylor Auctions.

It features a gathered bodice, cartridge pleats at the center back, two-piece sleeves with self-covered button closures, and an interior front closure that has both ties and lacing. There are some details on the interior (including the eyelets for lacing and apparent original length of the bodice) that make me wonder if it might be re-cut from an earlier style. I'm not an expert in the era, so I'd welcome others' thoughts on this! The link to the listing above has quite a few excellent detail images of the dress' unusual features if you are interested in seeing for yourself.

I started with using Black Snail 219 as a base for the shapes of this gown. I extended the length of the bodice, created a two-piece sleeve, and then just sort of...did my own thing for the skirt. My fabric wasn't as wide as it needed to be, so I used three panels to make up the back skirts of the gown. Because I had barely enough fabric to make this happen, the pattern isn't nicely matched there. However, by placing the odd panel in the center where the bulk of pleating and gathering takes place, the discrepancy isn't too obvious. Looking back, I also should have played with the shape of the bodice back panel a little more to get closer to the inspiration gown, but that was one of those things I didn't see until it was assembled.

Pleats verging into gathers at the back of the gown

Assembly was fairly straightforward, and done like most other 18th century and early 19th century gowns: bodice and bodice lining assembled together and skirts sandwiched between the bottom hem of the two. The skirts of the original have gathers, pleats, and a small section of what look like they may be cartridge pleats. I tried to stay true to the structure of the inspiration gown, but my skirts were still not quite as full, so I have a slightly smaller cartridge pleated section at the center back.

Guts

Once the gown was together, I did a fitting to ensure it was going to plan. I also used this to correct the neckline. The inspiration gown has a fairly low-cut neckline. I wanted to stay true to the original, but I also didn't want to overshoot, so I cut the bodice front higher and cut it down to fit my torso correctly after trying it on. I made sure to do this after I attached the skirts due to the differences in the way the bodice would fit with and without the additional weight.

The sleeves are a two-piece style, and appear to have the much larger, softer curve at the sleeve head and overlong cut seen in often Regency-era styles combined with the shaped-to-the-arm structure of 1780s-1790s sleeves. I consulted patterns for a few different sleeves before fusing the elements I wanted into my pattern piece. Initially, as these reminded me most of late 18th century sleeves, I flat lined them with the same lightweight muslin as the rest of the bodice. The original also had lined sleeves, but because of the probable difference in fabric weights, lining mine made them too bulky to hang and fit correctly. After removing the linings I was able to set them in without any further issue. Another transitional era quirk to this gown is the use of gathers rather than pleats on the sleeve head. I love an 18th century pleated sleeve, but I also love not futzing with the pleats to get them to match, and gathers do just that.

Quick fitting in an antique mirror. The front gathers look as I hoped, but the cartridge pleating at the center back isn't as apparent as on the original.

The oddball center front lining was the last thing I had left to do after putting on the sleeves and doing the penultimate fitting. It has both eyelets and attached tape ties, meaning at some point it closed both ways. I opted to add the ties, as I don't really enjoy making that many eyelets.

The last step was the sleeve closures: buttons and buttonholes. I covered basic plastic buttons from my stash in self fabric and created basic round buttonholes, as seen with the original gown. Thankfully there were only six buttons, unlike other recent historical projects.