Book Discussion: Gowns on Covers

 

Yet another common cover design that was not mentioned in the Twitter/X Post that was linked in my previous discussion. And one that did not occur to me until after I'd made that post.

Girls and women in fancy dresses and gowns, often with big, bulky and poofy skirts, is yet another cover design that has been used many times. This is especially popular on YA fantasy and on historical fiction covers. 

This blog post said that this sort of cover is "...used to obviously market books to a female audience." And the author cites the following series covers pictured below as having very girly designs on the covers and very focused on romance. The gown covers seem to indicate romance of sorts. I now almost always expect to see big gown on any historically themed book, whether it's romance or fantasy.

I'm not familiar with this series, but the titles
and covers alone look tempting!

 I read this series in 2015. I barely remember the books,
but did remember these covers! The fourth and fifth books in
the series are not shown here.

I'm sure there are plenty other gown and dress covers out there somewhere. But these big bulky ones seem to be the most common. I couldn't seem to find any with just plain dresses, without the bulky or goofy skirts. Again, that seems likely to only be on historically themed or YA fantasy covers. I would not expect to see such a dress on a cover of a book in a contemporary setting, at least not in most cases. Of course, that depends on the plot. 

How do you feel about his cover cliche?

Posted to Feed Your Fiction Addiction and It Starts at Midnight.