Figure 1.--This cabinet card portrait shows brothers Carl Gustav and Frank Edward in 1975. Franks wears a white dress with a plaid cash. Carl wears stripped long stockings. Notice the small coolarrs and bow. |
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Little Americam boys in the 1870s, as in Europe, continued to wear dresses. White dresses were popular, often paired with a colorfil waist sash. The Mint Museum of Art In North Carolina displayed is a young boy's dress with a rosette "bustle" purchased in 1879 in Chicago for 4-year old James Cromwell. Such garments
were worn over flounced petticoats with lace-trimmed or plain pantaletts beneath. The kilt suit appered in the 1870s and was enormously popular for younger boys. This was a fashion innovation based on the Scottish kilt that Queen Victoria had helped popularize for boys. While American boys did not wear Highland outfits, the kilt suits became very popular. And no where was it more popular than in America. Some were worn with tartan kilt skirts rather than the more muted materials more common in subsequent decades.
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