Figure 1.--This colorized portrait was dated 1928. HBC might have dated it earlier, but the grandparents, especially the grandmother may be wearing older styles. The boy looks about 6-7 years old and wears a knicker suit and old fashioned shoes. The little girl wears a simple shift dress. It has been colored pink, I'm not sure how accurate that was. The other colors seem very accurate. Brown was a popular color for a boys' suit. Note that he has a box of Animal Crackers.

Family scenes often help put the clothes worn by boys in content, showing what other members of the family were wearing at the same time. This we can see what the parents and siblings of other ages were wearing. This is important information in itself, but is also useful in helping to date undated images. Sometimes the family images are of the grandparents rather than the partents. Here some care must be takenm as grandparents are more likely to cling to sometimes dated styles. The grandmother here, for example, wears a dress looking rather like the 1910s. The scene here looks like a snap-shot taken in small-town America (figure 1). Like most American boys in the 1920s, the boy shown here wears knickers. The center hair parts that were popular in the early 20th century give way to more popular side parts, usually left parts.

Created: Ovtober 17, 2002
Last updated: October 17, 2002