English Boys Suit Decorations: Garments -- Trousers


Figure 1.--This CDV portrait shows an unidentified boy English boy waring a collar-buttoning suit with wide knee pants. Notice that the vertical checkered bands decoration on the jacket are repeated on the sleeve cuffs and carried on to the pants. His hair is done in bangs with a center part. The CDV is undated, but looks like the early-1870s. The composition sggests th 860s, but rounded coners of the mount suggesrs the 1870s. The studio is Doridge & Co, Plymouth.

For a time in he late-19th century we also see the trousers decorated as well, but not as profusely as the jacket. The decoration on trousers, if any, was made to match the jacket. You can see that clearly in the example on the previous page as well as the boy here (figure 1). We have noted vertical strips on the trousers as well as decorated hems, mostly for younger boys. We see various types of trousers, including long pants, knee pants, short pants and knickers which varies in popularity over time. The decorated trousers were mostly knee pants and knickers for younger boys in the second half of the 19th century. We notice some decorationnof adult troysers, but it was much more limited, the only common decorative device for men's trousers was a vertical stripe on the outer leg. Almost always the decorative elements for both boys and men were on the jacket, but in the second half of the 19th century we have noted jacket styling repeated on boys' trousers. This sems to have been especially common in the 1870s, but we note examples in he 1860s and 80s as well when the decoration of the jackets was especially popular.







HBC






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Created: 8:54 PM 6/14/2017
Last updated: 8:54 PM 6/14/2017