Figure 1.--This Chicago boy pictured with his sister wears a very fancy Fauntleroy blouse. Notice the fancy cuffs matching the collar. This cabinent card portrait is undated, but looks to have been taken in the late 1890s. |
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An almost obligatory element of a Fauntleroy suit was a large, fancy collar. Many, but not all Fauntleroy suits had matching, equally fancy wrist cuffs. Actually these were not part of the suits, but the blouses worn with the suits. A classic Fauntleroy blouse also had lace and ruffled trim to match the collar trim. The cuffs varied greatly in length. They extended well beyond the boys hand and were designed to be folded back over the sleeves of the jacket Sometimes the cuff trim extended back to the boys elbow. This was not obligatory. We see many portraits with boys in fancy Fauntleroy suits without fancy cuffs. The fancy cuffs, however were very common. HBC is not sure about the precise construction of the fancy wrist cuffs which were often worn to match the ruffled or lace collars in Fauntleroy outfits. Some of the collars and cuffs were part of fancy blouses. This meant that the blouses were made with sleve lengths exctending well beyond the boy's wrists. They were then doubled over adter he put on his jacket so they cobered the lower portion of the jacket sleeve. Others appear to have been separate items sewn on to the jackets. One HBC contributor believes that they were worn with cuff links. HBC is less sure of this and has not noticed cufflinks in either the photographic records of these suits or mentioned in the accompanying literature. The cuffs of course normally wee part of the blouse. Unlike the collars which could be pinned on, the cuffs were simply extensions of the blouse sleeves that were turned over. As the Fauntleroy style was especially popular in America, most of the examples we have found are American. A good example is the blouse worn by Robert Mason Hamilton, a Chicaho boy in 1897. Another example is B. Curtlis Sunderland about 1900.
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