What a $328 Jane Austen-inspired nightgown tells us about fashion

Clothing hangs at Brooklyn's Salter House in 2024. (OK McCausland for WaPo)

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Dôen, the flouncy, wholesome, girly label favored by Taylor Swift just released a $328 Jane Austen-inspired nightgown in collaboration with Vogue. It's made of white, semi-sheer cotton with a square collar, lacey detailing and a drawstring bow at the top. It's called the "Dashwood nightgown," named after Elinor Dashwood, the protagonist of "Sense and Sensibility."

Eagle-eyed readers may recall that we clocked nightgowns as outerwear in our New York Fashion Week roundup. This collaboration between Dôen and Vogue indicates that the trend has not yet crested.

The Dashwood nightgown was released "in celebration of the Vogue Book Club's selection of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility." The Vogue Book Club was created in January as a way to harness the popularity of BookTok into group chats among Vogue readers and IRL Vogue-sponsored events. And "Sense and Sensibility" was selected to coincide with the Oct. 16 release of a new film adaptation.

So it's a dress promoting an online book club promoting a movie promoting a fashion magazine. A brand-activation inception! How very of-the-moment!

But the garment itself is of the past. According to its product description, the Dashwood nightgown "takes inspiration from Regency-era chemises and the romantic world of Austen's heroines." That may be a bit of a stretch.

"That is absolutely nothing like a Regency-era chemise," said Cassidy Percoco, a fashion historian and curator at the Genesee Country Village and Museum in Mumford, New York. According to Percoco, chemises worn when "Sense and Sensibility" was published in 1811 were unadorned, plain, linen numbers with scoop necks. "They were really just about providing a layer between the body and the corset," Percoco said.

It wasn't until the 1890s that nightgowns began to be embellished with trimmings and lace that would characterize the nightgowns of the Edwardian era, which Percoco said better jibes with the look of the Dashwood.

But historical accuracy isn't the point. The Dashwood and other similar nightgowns aren't worn by actors who work in those "towns" you'd go to on elementary school field trips where actors would churn butter and pretend they didn't know what a car or a television was.

Molly Marjorie is a 33-year-old artist from Berkeley, California, who has been wearing vintage nightgowns as outerwear since she was in her 20s. "They've gotten so expensive now that everybody loves them," she said.

Marjorie appreciates the romance of clothes made before the era of fast fashion and the soft texture of bias-cut sleepwear from the '40s and '50s.

"I just really love things that can go over my whole body and make me feel like I'm wearing a whole outfit, but kind of also make me feel like I'm not wearing anything at all," she said. She also wonders if there's an unconscious appeal for people who are feeling depleted by the present day. "There's something about being exhausted and being tired and wearing something that is meant for rest," she said.

That emphasis on rest differentiates the nightgown from other retro feminine aesthetics such as cottagecore and tradwife. The nightgown is not worn to do farm chores or cook or clean. It's looser than prairie garb or a '50s cocktail dress, both in fit and ethic. It is, after all, designed for the bedroom.

For several years, fashion media has released a steady trickle of trend pieces about nightgowns. In 2025, Reformation and Damson Madder both sold night dresses. Meg Stalter wore a series of flouncy nighties by the British label If Only If in the 2025Lena Dunham Netflix comedy "Too Much." The musician Laufey showed up to the Billboard Women in Music event in June wearing a sheer ruffled Chloé gown from the brand's fall 2026 collection.

"As a styling base, it's really great," said Carson Salter, who co-owns the store and lifestyle brand Salter House with his wife, Sandeep Salter. Salter House has sold vintage nightgowns since it opened in 2018. The nightgowns were a hit, especially among the brand's staff members, who began styling them with belts, coats and extra layers.

In 2021, at the height of pandemic-inspired pajama dressing, Salter House launched its own in-house nightgown brand. Today, it stocks a variety of original designs. "Some are more Elizabethan, some are more Edwardian, others are a little more prairie, and we have another that feels quite French," Salter said.

For Salter, nightgown-as-outerwear is the spiritual and commercial center of his brand. "Bridging from those most private spaces, those intimate uses, to going out, to being with friends, has felt like a really important idea for us."

It's an idea that he thinks has staying power. "This is a drum that we've been beating for a few years," he said. "We really feel like it's a key styling approach, and we're going to keep doing it."

Today's four horsies

Big things - like your TV spying on you - are "horsemen" of the apocalypse.

Little things - like your toothbrush spying on your throat - are "horsies" of the apocalypse.

Today's four horsies:

• Mr. England pageant organizers fear a British "hunk shortage" after only seven people entered. I don't mean to be political, but this could be solved with a special visa granted to any of the entrants from Saturday's Mister International pageant.

• According to the Wall Street Journal, caviar is now so "cheap" that you can feed it to a toddler. "Daddy, what did you do during the greatest era of wealth inequality in American history?" "Well, son, we watched you barf whale roe onto your nanny's burp cloth." Raffi, it's time for an angry, class-conscious remake of "Baby Beluga."

• Kids have been chatting with one another in the Spotify comments section on NPR shows as a way to get around social media restrictions. Twenty-somethings are packing jazz clubs. The 21-year-old musician Glaive is reading Dostoevsky. Why are young people all trying to turn into my dad?

• Hidden Valley is releasing "spooky ranch" that has been dyed black. I, for one, am ready to have the gothiest tater tots of my life.

Shane O'Neill connects the dots between entertainment news, internet fads, celebrity gossip and pop culture ephemera to sketch a portrait of how we live today.