Figure 1.--This cabinet card portrait shows three unidentified brothers, two of which look to be twins. The oldr boys have cut-away jacket velvet suits wih knickers. They all have blouses with Eton ciollars. The younger boy has a plainer material with short pants. The boys looks to be about 3-6 years of age. The portrait is undated. We would guess it was taken about the turn-of-the 20th century.

Boys suits included two garments, the jacket and pantrs. Here we are taking about cut-away jackets. The other basic part of the suit was the trousers or pants. Here we see all kinds of pants, including short pants, knickers, straight-leg knee pants, and long pants. The styling of the various kinds of pants changed quite a bit over time. Pants basically followed the trouser fashion conventions of the day. The vest (waistcoat) was also commonly worn. (The term 'vest' has a different meaning in England.) The vest was optional, but very common in the 19th century. This depended somewhat on the blouse. As Fauntlerioy bloses became more popular we begfin to see fewer vests. Vests seem most common in the 1860s-70s, although this we still need to confirm as we expand our English archive.

Vests

We see many younger boys wearing cut-away jackets with vests. Vests (waistcoats) were common, with these jackets, but not compulsory. (The term 'vest' has a different meaning in England.) We are not sure just how common they were. Quite a few portraits show the boys wearing vests with these jackets. This was especially the case during the early period (1860s-70s). The vests we see matched the jackets and pnts. The boy on the previous page has a vest in the 1860s. So do the Watson boys in 1863. Our archive is building, but still too limited, however, to make any definitive assments at this time. We see a lot of vests in the 1860s and 70s. The primary change was in the 1880s, especialy by the mid-80s when Fauntleroy suits became popular and the idea was to display fancy blouses. A vest would have covered up all the ruffles and lace on the blouse whuch of course would have defeated the whole purpose of wearing an expenmsive blouse. Here we see three brthers with Eton collars and plain vests (figure 1). By the late-19th century we see far fewer vests.

Trousers

Cut-away jackets were worn with all kinds of trousers, knee pants, bloomer knickers, and long trousers. Some of the younger boys wore cut-sawy jackets with skirts/kilts. We are not sure just how common the various tyoes of pants were. Our 19th century English archive is too limited to form any valid judgement. We note all these different types of trousrs being worn. We see the same variety of trouses in America for which we have many more images. We are just not sure how common the different types were in England. The cut-away jacket was primarily worn by younger boys so we believe that the shortened-length pants were more common with cut-away jackets than they would have beem for a wider age cross section. The type of trousers worn with cut-away jackets were in part affected by the decade. While we see boys wearing these shortened-length pants, long pants were still very common, even for younger boys. This included even pre-school boys, at least in the 1860s anhd 70s. By the 1880s the shortened-length pants were being more widely worn, although cut-away lackets were declining in popularity.

Created: 4:04 AM 8/5/2018
Last updated: 4:04 AM 8/5/2018