Smock

This traditional English garment is of a type worn by country men and boys, agricultural workers in particular, until the late nineteenth century, and often embroidered with symbols or patterns indicative of their work. Smocks are made from squares and rectangles of fabric, which makes a paper pattern un-necessary in their construction and eliminates wasting fabric in cutting curved facings etc. As their use in the countryside was dying out towards the end of the nineteenth century, rural smocks were taken as the inspiration for girl's dresses by first the æsthetic movement and then by clothes reformers.