American Boys' Collar Styles: Ruffled Collars--Colors and Patterns


Figure 1.--This boy in this cabinet card is unidentified. The cabinent card portrait was probably taken at the turn-of-the 20th century, perhaps 1900-05. The white whicker furniture is a good example. The boy seems to have plaid material mixed in with white fabric in his ruffled collar. He wears it with a double breasted suit that may be a sailor suit as we see a back flap. The ruffled collar is so large that it covers all of the top of the jacket Note the matching wrist cuffs. The studio was Garvin in Pottsville, Pennsylvania.

The great majority of the ruffled collars we note boys wearing were white collars, probably well over 80 percent. There were, however, colored collars. These were collars on fancy colored blouses. These colored blouses were not uncommon. There were age conventions associated with the colored and patterned blouses and the collars associated with them. Most mothers when putting together a classic Fauntleroy outfit with a cut-away jacket for a uonger boy wanted a white blouse and collar. For older boys there was more of a willingness to use color and patterned blouses and collzars. Many of the Fauntleroy blouses made for older boys were done in colors or patterns. These blouses and collars were worn with a variety of jackets and often during the summer without a jacket. Unfortunately the black and white photography of the day provides few clues as to actual shades, but we note both dark- and light- colored blouses and collars. In addition to collars that were all one color, we note mixed collars, color mixed in with white fabric in the collar. These were less common than the solid colored collar. Here the fabric mix included patterned fabric as well as soloid colored mixes. We have found relativly few of the mixed collars, but examples do exist in the photographic record. We are not sure about the chronology of tghese colored collars. We have not yet found them in the 1890s and early-90s. Many if the examples date to the turn-of-the-20th century, but we are still assessing the chronology.








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Created: 7:17 AM 8/19/2011
Last updated: 7:17 AM 8/19/2011