Figure 1.--This Americam cabinet card portrait shows two brother aged about 8-13 years old. The younger boy wears a collar-buttoning double-breasted double breasted suit. His older brother wears a vested lapel suit. There is a fob with the vest, presumably with a pocket watch. Notice the different hats. Both boys have straw hats. The younger boy wears what we would call a boater. His brother has a similar hat, but with differences. The brim is more narrow and the central crown element rises much higher. We are not sure what this hat would be called at the time. The portait is not dated, but looks like the 1870s to us. The photographer is O?. B. DeMarat in Philadelpgia.

The CDVs and new cabinet cards provide a wealth of information about fashions in the 1870s. This all began in the 1860s and the numbers of available images just continued to grow in the 70s. Unlike many othr garmenrs, subjecrs ofren removed their headwear. The mumber of images, however, was so large that we gave a very good idea of hat styles. We see fewer mem wearing top hats, but this was a style boys never wore to any extemt. We see many of the styles popular in the 1860s contuining to be worn in the 70s. The most common hat style for boys continued to be the rounded-crown had with a smm to medium brim. It is often called a parson's hat today. We are not sure what it was called in the 19th century. We see the helet-like stiff bowler hat. This was primarly a man's hat, but we see some boys and teenagers wearing them. We see more straw hats in the 1870s. There were quite a range of tyles. The boater was a style that both boys and men wore. Some has central pirces that rose mkuch higher than the modern comcept of a boater. We are not entirely suure thry were also ncalled a boater. We also see a small straw hat with wide ribbon, called a Nattie, but we do not see many boys wearing them.

Created: 2:44 AM 6/3/2018
Last updated: 2:44 AM 6/3/2018