Figure 1.--This CDV portrait shows an unidentified older girl and her little brother dressed in matching dresses. They look to be about 3-5 years old. The studio was Willi Philipp in Stargard, Pomerania. The portrait is undated, but the color of the mount and the fact that the studio information is pressed into the mount suggests to us it was taken ariound the turn-of-the 20th century. A reader comments, "The children's dresses appear to be made of chiffon or some other diaphanous (semi-transparent) materail as their petticoats are apparent. Such thin material must be unusual for children's clothes at that time."

Dresses and other skirted garments were primarily worn by girls. German sisters might be dressed in identical dresses. We see quite a few examples of this. And of course in the 19th century, all girls wore dresses. In most cases they were not identical, but we see quite a few examples of identical dresses. This varied from family to family and was affected by the age of the girls. It was most common with younger girls. We see some teenagers, but not nearly as many. With the exception of sailor outfits, however, this was not as common as for the boys. Younger boys might wear dresses, although this convention was not as strong in Germany as in several other other European countries. We rarely see German boys older than 4 years of age wearing dresses. As a result, we never see family images with all the children wearing identical dresses or even dresses in general. We do see a few brother-sister images of children wearing dresses, including identical dresses. They are not very common and all the ones we have found so far show a girl with a younger brother. We do not have enough examples to assess chronological and stylistic trends. There are probably examples of two younger boys wearing dresses, but they are not very common.

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Created: 8:37 AM 10/1/2011
Last updated: 9:14 PM 10/1/2011