Scottish Suits: Age Trends


Figure 1.--Here we see two Scottish brothers demonstrating common age trends concerning suits in Scotland. This was atandard cabinet card. The older brother is standing and is wearing a jacket, vest, tie, and long pants. The younger boy is seated and is wearing a sailor suit with bloomer knickers and long tockings. He is holding a large toy boat. The portrait is undated, but we would guess it was taken in the 1890s. The bottom of the gold edged card is marked "Turnbull & Sons, Glasgow, Greenock, Kilmarnock, & Belfast". We are not sure in which of the studios it was taken.

An important factor was age. Suit styles were very different for boys of differenht ages. This varied a good deal chronologically. Such differences are now much less notable. We begin to see younger boys wearing a variety of shortened-length pants in the mid-19th century. We see a variety of fancy suits for younger boys, including Zoyuave suits, cut-away jackets, sailor suits, Faumtleroy suits and others. Most boys continued wearing long pants suits, however, until the late-19th century. We note both collar-buttoning and and lapel jackets. The collar-buttoning jackets were popular for younger boys until after the turn-of-the 20th century. Age 8 became an important point at which styles changed. This was mamy boys at ahe began to go away from home and board. Most boys did not board or even attend private schools, but these schools tended to set fashion trends until after World war II. Here the English schools may have been more important than the Scottish schools. You see a lot less of the juvenile styles after this. Many school-age boys wore Eton suits or regular suits with Eton collars. Single-breasted jackets became standard for boys in the 1920s. Younger boys still wore short pants, but this also began to change by the 1960s. And by the end of the decade boys suits were very similar for all but the youngest age groups. Boys by this time, however, were not very commonly wearing suits.







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Created: 9:20 AM 6/16/2011
Last updated: 9:20 AM 6/16/2011