Figure 1.--Here e see five boys age about 6-16 years of age. Some may be brothers. They looked like they are dressed up for church. Given the background, they might be from Florida. Flat caps are clearly the most common headwear, but to of the boys wear hats. As w common in the1910s, all but one of the boys wear knickers.

Headwear was still commonly worn in the 1910s by boys as well as men. We continue to see boys commonly wearing both hats and caps in the 1910s. This is the last decade in which this was the case. We see boys wearing mostly caps in the 1920s and subsequent decades, althought there was a minor revival of hats in the 50s. Group photographs often show boys wearing hats and caps. And headwear was still very commonly worn for play and especially when dressing up. Often we judge prevalence by looking at school class portraits. Unfortunarely the boys usally do not have their headwear in for the portraits. But thanks to the amateur photographs that began to appear in numbers in the 1900s, we have a substabtial photographic record to assess prevalence. We can not only assess the prevlence of hats and caps, but the various styles as well. And we see severl styles of hats, but one style of cap was clearly dominant in the 10s--the flat cap. While not the only cap style, it cleaely dominanted boys' wear. Most of the other styles were seasonal cold weather caps and styles for younge boys.

Created: 8:55 PM 8/10/2014
Last updated: 8:55 PM 8/10/2014