Figure 1.--Here we see four unidentified boys in a cabinet card portrait. They look to be about 3-11 years old. Basic biology helps set the age parameters. The three older boys wear standard suits with lrge white ruffled collars. Simne of he boys alo wear floppy bows. It is less clear what the younger boy is wearing, perhps a dress. The studio is J.B. Wilson in Chicago.

We still see quite a number of 11 year old wearing ruffled collars during the Fauntleroy era. This varied omewht. Boys of this age rarely wore the classic Fauntleroy suit with a ruffled collar. We do see large ruffled collars worn with regular uits, often with floppy bows. We see these large white collars in the 1880s and 90s, but less so in the 1900s, al least for 11 year olds. We some times see mothers using these collars as a way of corrdinating the dress of the entire family, at least for boys up to 11 or 12 or even 13 years of age. After about 11 years of age, these rulled collars done as formal Fauntleroy blouses declined substantially in prevalence. In additiin to he white Fauntleroy blouse, we also see patterned blouses with lare cillares with some ruffled collars. The ad copy in period catalogs sometimes also reffered to these collars as Fauntleroy blouses. They were, however, less formal than the white blouses and were usually not worn with floppy bows.

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Created: 5:17 PM 12/2/2015
Last updated: 5:17 PM 12/2/2015