Smocking is an
embroidery technique used to gather
fabric so that it can stretch. Before
elastic, smocking was commonly used in
cuffs,
bodices, and
necklines in garments where
buttons were undesirable. Smocking developed in
England and has been practised since the
Middle Ages and is unusual among embroidery methods in that it was often worn by laborers. Other major embroidery styles are purely decorative and represented status symbols. Smocking was practical for garments to be both form fitting and flexible, hence its name derives from
smock — a farmer's work shirt. Smocking was used most extensively in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.