Figure 1.-- Younger boys in the 1910s might wear sailor style hats with flexible brims that were turned up and down. This was often done in a stylish manner, only folding part of the brim up or down. This snapshot was taken in July 1910. We still see quite a number of boys wearing hatsin the 1910s, but this would be last decade in which hats were common for boys. After the 1910s, boys motly wore caps.

Hats declined in popularity for boys in the 1910s. We see far fewer boys wearing hats. Younger boys still wore wide-brimmed hats. The extremely wide-brimmed straw hats worn by very little boys in the 1900s were now less common. Some sailor hats had the brims turned down. This is a signature style of the 1910s. Younger boys still wearing hats often wore them with the brim or part of it bent up or dowm. Some hats like boaters had stiff brims tht could not be folded down. Other hats had more flexible brims that could be worn in many different ways. This was largely a style for children from well-to-do families. Most boys wore caps. Boys also wore sailor caps with the still popular sailor suit. We also see peaked capsbat the beginning of the decade. . Older boys might wear straw boaters. The most common style had by the 1910s, however, become the flat cap. The flat cap continued to grow in popularity during the 1910s. Caps in the 1900s were more diverse. We still see other caps in the 1910s, but the flat cap was decidely the most popular style. The flat cap is today seen as a rather casual style, but for boys in the 1910s it was worn both as a casual style as well as a more formal style with a suit. Many boys wore flat caps to school. We see other cap styles mostly in the winter. Boys in northern states might wears woodsmen caps. The flat cap could be worn during the winter and many flat caps had flaps that could be pulled down over the ears. The British-style peaked cap which was quite common in the 1900s declined in popularity. It also took on a more upper-class association and became more of a formal style worn with suits. The American Boy Scouts adopted the broad-brimmed hat used by the Brirish Scouts and most other Scouts around the world. There were no Scout caps in the 1910s.

Prevalence

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 substantial photographic record to assess prevalence. We can not only assess the prevalence 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 othr tyls were seasonal cold weather caps and styles for younge boys.

Ages

It was in the 1910s that the basic headwear for boys shifted from hats to caps. We still see some of the large hats for younger boys. This included wide brimmed hats, often with some of the brim slanted down. We also see younger boys wearing sailor caps. we countinue to see children wearing stocking caps during the winter. Both boys and girls wore stocking caps. Theu had many advanyages, they were cheap, could be colorful, were warm, and stayed on he head even on windy days. The big shift we see is the flat cap suddenly becoming the headwear for school age boys. The flat cap was a versitile garment for this age group, it could be worn for play, school, and dress ocassions--all the major occassions for boys. We see quite a range of caps and hats in the 1900s. This changed in the 1910s, suddenly the flat cap predominated in the huge quantity of family snapshots that and now made up perdominate portion of the maasive photographic record. We see this with little boys just beginning at school to older teenagers finishing highschool. For that matter they were commn in college as well. Basically there were no age conventions for flat caps except pre-school boys who mothers thought should notvyet wear a school-age style. The other exception is adult men who wanted a more established, mature look. Flat caps were not the only cap style boys wore, but it certainly dominated the decade.

Gender

We continue to see some overlap between American boys and girls headwear, but basically headwear was gender specific. Mostly it was younger boys who wore some of the same styles as girls. But this was changing. Fewer boys were wearing broad-brimed hats. In fact fewer boys were wearing hats at all and this included yonger boys. This was not the case for girls. The girls were still very commonly wearing hats, including wide-brimmrd hats, although the sizes of the brims declined during the decade. We see quite a numbr of girls not wearing hats and other headwear. This was because hair bows became very stylish-- and the arger the bows the more stylish. And you coudn't wear both nows and hats at the same time--at least easily. The only major exception was winter stocking caps, although even here there could be gender differences like colors. For the most part we have stribgly gender specific headwear in the 1910s. Headwear became more specific in the 1910s. After the turn if the 20th century we see more boys wearing caps rather than hats. Throughout the 19th century boys commonly wore hats. After the turn-of-the century caps became increasingly popular with boys. And girls rarely wore any kind of caps. A rare exception was sailor caps, but this dis mot last very long..

Types

The two basic types of boys' headwear were hars and caps in the 1910s. Caps were the most common, bt we sill see many boys wearing hats. Hats were declining in popularity, but we still see quite a number. There were also berets abd beanies, but they were not very common even for younger boys. There were some destinctive hat types, such as turned down brims in the 190s. We see many different cap in the 1900s, but in the 1910s the flat cap was the dominant cap style, commonly worn with knickers. Hats declined in popularity for boys in the 1910s. We see far fewer boys wearing hats than was common in the 19th century. That said we see more hats in the 1900s and 10s than we see subsequently in the 20th century after World War I. The flat cap in particular became very common for boys. We note wide-brimmed sailor hats with the brim turned down. This is a signature style of the 1910s. Younger boys still wearing hats often wore them with the brim or part of it bent up or down. Most boys wore caps in the 1910s, but hats were still common. This actually would be the last decade in which hats werre commonly worn by boys, although caps were more common. The flat cap continued to grow in popularity during the 1910s. Caps in the 1900s were more diverse. We still see other caps in the 1910s, but the flat cap was decidely the most popular style, especially by the mid-1910s. The flat cap is today seen as a rather casual style, but for boys in the 1910s it was worn both as a casual style as well as a more formal style with a suit, although there were some differences from family to family. Some suits even had matching caps. We see boys wearing British-styled peaked caps in the 1900s, but in the 1910s, while the peakd cap

Created: 10:58 PM 9/11/2007
Last updated: 1:57 AM 6/7/2020