Figure 1.--The boy in this CDV portrait is Morbios (as best I can make out) Petor. He was from Helsingborg. He wears a striped tunic suit with a very small tunic jacket. The portrait is undated, but note the stand behind the boy. This means it was a fairly early portrait. We would guess that it was taken some time in the 1870s. A German reader writes, "Yes, this portrait is early, but the stand is not definitive proof that it was taken in the 1870s, I have seen stands even after the turn-of-the 20th century."

We do not know much about tunics in the early 19th century. One portrait from prrhaps the 1870s shows a Swedish boy wearing a very short striped tunic jacket with matching long pants (figure 1). We have never seen a tunic suit quite like it. We are not sure how common such suits were in Sweden. We note that tunics were very common at the turn of the 20th century. The tunic suit here is agood example. A sailor tunic suit on the previous page that looks indestinguishable from those we have seen in other countries. A reade writes, "The boy looks as if he is 9 or 10 years old to me. That seems rather old for a tunic suit. If my age estimate is correct then Swedish styles were very different (at least as far as tunic suits go) from England, France and America during the same time period." We might gues the boy was just a little bit younger, perhaos 8-9 years old. He does seem a little older than the American boys we hsve noted wearing tunics in the 1870s. And the style is quite a bit different. Notice how short the y=tunic jacket was. Swedish styles in the 19th century were heavily infkluenced by Germany. I have nit seen. however, a Germn tunic suit quite like this one.

Related Style Pages in the Boys' Historical Web Site
[Long pants suits] [Knicker suits] [Short pants suits] [Socks] [Eton suits] [Jacket and trousers] [Blazer]
[School sandals] [School smocks] [Sailor suits] [Pinafores] [Long stockings]

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Created: 2:08 AM 1/19/2008
Last updated: 2:08 AM 1/19/2008