Are work smocks the future of fashion?

If you visit any street market, from the Plaça Major in Vic to the banks of the Ter River in Girona, you'll find more than one stall dedicated to a garment that, despite being essential in the lives of many women, has too often been ridiculed and scorned: the housecoat. A seemingly modest garment—without glamour or pretension—that has nevertheless made it all the way to Paris Fashion Week thanks to Miu Miu, one of the most influential houses when it comes to setting global trends. This surprising appearance has elicited diverse interpretations: from a taste for ugliness to readings of feminist homage. But what meaning does this garment truly hold, and what does it imply to see it on a runway?

The smock can be considered an evolution of the traditional apron, although it introduces notable changes. The apron, much older and common for both sexes, only covers the front of the body and is associated with manual labor or service. The smock, on the other hand, is a lightweight garment designed exclusively for women, which covers the entire body and can be worn alone or over clothing. It fastens more comfortably with front buttons, often lacks sleeves to facilitate movement, and incorporates wide pockets for carrying eggs, vegetables, or small household items. Smocks were often made at home with inexpensive fabrics or leftover scraps and were hemmed to reinforce collars, pockets, and edges, preventing fraying from frequent washing. The patterns—flowers, stripes, checks—served a dual purpose: to camouflage stains and, at the same time, to embellish a utilitarian garment. But why did a work smock need to be attractive?

While the apron protected clothing, the housecoat replaced it: it became a symbol of domestic identity. If the former was a symbol of service or the working class, the latter was born to dress the housewife from the late 19th century onward, within the bourgeois moral context that confined women to the private sphere while men assumed the role of breadwinner. The apron was removed for visitors because it was not considered "presentable clothing"; the housecoat, on the other hand, represented a new compromise between comfort and decorum, a new boundary between "being at home" and "going out" that could now be displayed in public, as a sign of embracing this new identity.

Thus, beyond its functionality, the dressing gown ended up encapsulating the woman's position as a servant of the home, without social recognition or economic independence. The dressing gown becomes a "textile prison" of the female domestic role, a visual icon of the systemic dissatisfaction of women, which Betty Friedan in The mystique of femininity (1963) dubbed it "the problem that has no name."

This symbolism appears strongly in the British Free Cinema film Woman in a Dressing Gown (1957). As the title suggests, the protagonist wears her dressing gown (in this case, a bautiné) as a uniform of invisibility, a metaphor for a femininity resigned to domestic monotony. The piece thus becomes the visual symbol of the woman annihilated by routine, who loses her status as a desirable individual by being reduced to the roles of mother and wife.

While it is essential to acknowledge women's contributions to the domestic sphere as an act of historical justice, we also cannot romanticize the forced circumstances under which they were compelled to perform these tasks. And, although it is interesting and necessary for fashion to reinterpret and redefine icons of the past, prudence is needed in its interpretation, especially in today's context, when conservative ideologies are reinventing domesticity as the feminine ideal, as is the case with... tradwivesThe line between homage or remembrance and a supposedly joyful and natural inclination can be very thin. And it must always be kept in mind that this is not a new gesture—during the Franco regime, the adoration of women as "angels of the home" already served to disguise as a desirable choice what was undoubtedly an imprisonment of their rights and freedoms.