Figure 1.--Here we see a family scene in the Danish West Indies about 1915. We note this boy who looks to be about 3 years old wearing a sailor-styled romper suit. Unlike the adult outdits, it is a colored suit, probably light blue. He seems to be olding a bottle of beer.

We have very limited information about rompers in Denmark. That reflrcts our limited Danish archive rather than any reflection on the actual prevalence of ropers in Denmark. Rompers were primarily a French style, but we see them being worn in other countries as well. As in France, rompers seems primarily a garment worn by boys. his is, however, only our initial assessment. We see both play and dress frompers. We think that trends were somewhat similar to those in Germany, although dress rompers do not seem common in Germany. We see Danish boys wearing rompers in the 1910s. The first example we have is a boy wearing a sailor-styled romper suit in the Danish West Indies, about 1915 (figure 1). Unlike the adult outdits, it is a colored suit, probably light blue. One portrait of a unidentified Danish boy in 1942 looks to be a blue velvet romper suit. We note some images of Danish boys wearing rompers. One example is Bohr family in the 1950s. So far we have only found romper suits and not the vstious permutations such as strap and bib-front rompers, but this is probably because of our small archive. The Danesc use both kravledragt and gymnastiktøj to mean rompers. The later term seems to stem from the use in school physical education classes.

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Created: 12:28 AM 7/19/2012
Last updated: 12:28 AM 7/19/2012