Figure 1.--This cabinet card portrait shows the five children of an undentified Wisconsin family. Based on the mount style, the portrait was taken in the 1900s decade, opribabkly about 1905. They look to be about 1-12 years old. The younger boys who are probably about 5-7 years old wearv idebntiucal sailor suits. . The baby and girl wear white dresses. The older boy wears a single-breasted suit jacket with high-set lapels. All the boys wear knee pants with black long stockings. The girls also wear black long stockings. Unusually, the children all have center parts, this was most commonly how girls parted their hair. This portrait helps to identuify when mother cut the boys' curls, about 6 years old when they began school. The studio was somehing like S.H. Lucksinger. We can't nmake out the city, but it was a city in Wisconsin.

We continue to see major differences in boys' clothing based on ages (age frading)in the 1900s decade. There were also age differences in girls's clothing, but not as significant. The primary didderences for girls were skirt lenth and hair bows. (Hair bows would become much more important in the 1910s). We still see some yonger boys wearing dresses, but this is a decling convention, much less prevalent than in the 1890s. We also see far fewer boys wearing kilt suits, a popular style in the late-19th century, There was one popular skirted style--tunic suits, sometimes called called Buster Brown suits. Younger boys might Fauntleroys suits, but this style was also declining. The sailor suit was still popular for boys, but we see it being worn by incresingly younger boys. Most boys wore knee pants, although by the end of the decade they were being replaced by knickers. Boys wore knee pants/knickers into their teens. Most younger teens wire them, although by the final high school yers, most boys were wearing long pants. Most children at the time finishd school in the 8th grade (about 13-years old). Only a minority continued on to high school. The boys ending their schooling with the 8th grade entered the work firce at that time. They tended to make the transition to long pants a little earlier than the boys still in school, but this varied from family to family. HBC has details on 1900s school trends. Schoolwear is a good reflection of popular styles during the decade. Boys still commonly wore suits, usually with knee pants and knickers. Collar buttoning jackets were going out of styles. We see Norfolk suits as ell as single-and double jacket jackets. Double breasted jackets were still quite common. We still see boys wearing ringlet curls, mostly pre-school boys. Like tghe Fauntlerioy suit, howver, this ringlets were declining even for younger boys.

Created: 9:31 PM 10/6/2022
Last updated: 9:32 PM 10/6/2022