Figure 1.--This snapshot provides a wonderful overview of popular children styles in early-20th centutry Russia. We are not sure just what kind of image this is. It looks like a group of city children spending the summer in the countryside. They look like a group of middle-class children from comforyable, but not wealthy fmilies. Or perhaps it is a school group in a provincial town. They look about the same age, about 9-12 years old. The photograph is undated, but looks like the 1900s to us. A reder writes, "If I had to guess, I would say the children are more provincial than from amajor metropolitan center such as St. Petersburg where the styles were very important. I also agree that the children look more middle class than very wealthy. The boy third from far right second row is wearing a rather fancy sailor suit with sailor cap. I think in Britain it was called an admiral suit after Admiral Nelson. The other children seem less fashionably dressed but I am uncertain what that really means."

The upper class and prosperous middle class dressed very different than the working-class, especially the large rural peasant popultion. We see boys' peaaant styles this influnencing the outfits of urban boys to some extent. We see Russian blouse outfits as well as quite a number of schools adopting aind of peasant style because it was essentially the uniform worn by Russian Army soldiers. Other than this, the clothes worn by the prosperous urban population was not greatly different than the styles popular in the West. Little boys continued to wear dresses after the turn of the Century, but this fashion was passing and for the most part relatively young boys wore dresses. Sailor suits were popular for boys. The Tsarevitch Alexis almost always wore sailor suits, at least until World War I began (1914). Then he mostly wore army uniforms. Many other aristocratic and wealthy boys, as well as middle-class boys, also wore sailor suits, but this was a realtively small part of the population. The sailor suit was probably a reflection of the German influence. More common for most Russian boys were loose fitting Russian blouses with closed collars. This style also became popular in Germany and other European countries, but there the open square collared Russian blouse was more common. School age boys sometimes had their hair shaved as in Germany.

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Created: 8:42 PM 12/20/2016
Last updated: 8:42 PM 12/20/2016