Smock-frock

Characteristic features of the smock-frock are fullness across the back, breast, and sleeves folded into "tubes" (narrow unpressed pleats) held in place and decorated by smocking, a type of surface embroidery in a honeycomb pattern across the pleats that controls the fullness while allowing a degree of stretch.

The spread of the smock-frock matches a general decrease in agricultural wages and living standards in these areas in the second half of the 18th century.

[9] Embroidery styles for smock-frocks varied by region, and a number of motifs became traditional for various occupations: wheel-shapes for carters and wagoners, sheep and crooks for shepherds, and so on.

By the mid-19th century, wearing of traditional smock-frocks by country laborers was dying out,[10] although Gertrude Jekyll noticed them in Sussex during her youth, and smocks were still worn by some people in rural Buckinghamshire into the 1920s.

As the authentic tradition was fading away, a romantic nostalgia for England's rural past, as epitomized by the illustrations of Kate Greenaway, led to a fashion for women's and children's dresses and blouses loosely styled after smock-frocks.