Figure 1.--This CDV shows two unidentified brothers in their back garden wearing identical sailor caps. We can't read the cap tallies. The older boy wears a standard V-front sailor blouse. His little brither weaers a suit with a pointed tip collar, although it has a back flap. They look to be about 6-10 years old. The CDV is undated, but was probably taken about 1890. There is no studio or city information.

Sailor caps are of course most associated with sailor suits. But sailor headwear, both caps and haats were worn with other outfits as well. This of course speaks to the populoarity of sailor-stykled jeadwear. Od course not all outfits had a specific dedicated style of headwear. And a boy unless from a vey wealthy family could not have headwear for every different style of suit. As sailor outfits were so common, it thus was only natural for sailor headwaer to be worn with other non-sailor outfits. Large numbers of boys had sailor suits, esoecially middle-classs boys. (Uper-class boys akso wee likely to have sailor suits, but unlike thr middle-class was a small segment of the population.) Thus the sailor cap was a cap that many boys had. And more often than not, the jeadwear that most boys had weere caps and a very common capmstyle that boys had were sailoor caps. Caps were less expensive than hats and were worn by a wider age range than hats. Thus we see sailor caps with all sorts of different suits and blousers.

Created: 12:11 AM 4/23/2024
Last updated: 12:11 AM 4/23/2024