Figure 1.-- Here we see a German brother and sister wearing identical blouses, white anklet socks, and strap shoes. They even have similar hair cuts. Of course the boy weArs short pants and his big sidter a skirt. The boy is about 5 years old sand and the girl about 7 or 8 years. The snap shot is undated, but looks like the 1930s.

We are not entirely sure about the chronology of matxching brother-sister oufits yet. We still have relatively little information about the 19th century. We believe that brothers and sisters also wore matching sailor suits in the 19th century, but our archive is very limited. We see some siblings wearing coordinated dresses. At the time it was inappropriate for girls to wear trousers and acceptable for boys to wear a ange of skirted garments. We know much more about the 20th century. Gradually in the 20th centuty, gender conventions reversed. it became unacceptable for boys to wear skirted outfits and acceptable for girls to wear pants. The basic coordinating approach also changed. Boys would wear pants and girlsd skirts, but the rest of the outfit could be identical or coordinated. We see quite a number of brothers and sisters wearing identical middy blouses in the 20th century. Here we note quite a number of examples in the photgraphic record. Sailor outdits seems to be the most commoon outfits for dressing boys anf girls alike in the 20th century, but they were not the only outfits. We also see the children wearing matching blouses. The children here are a good example (figure 1). A reader writes, "I was curious to know why the boy needs three buttons attached to his blouse and the girl only two. Trying my usual trick of changing the exposure, I had hoped to see the structure of the boys shorts. eg did they have a fly front requiring the third button? All I discovered was that the girl's skirt is pleated." Another reader writes, "I am pretty certain that the boy's trousers do not have a fly and open on the sides. With that configuration and side pockets, you would need the extra buttons which to me looks like 2 in front, 2 on sides and 2 in back (guessing for some)." This may well be the case. Another possibility is that the short pants were made without either a fly or front flap. Msany little boys' pants, especially short poasnts were mase like that.

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Created: 6:28 PM 4/8/2010
Last updated: 7:46 AM 4/9/2010