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boys' skirted garments chronology United States 1880s
American Boy Skirted Garments: Chronology--The 1880s
Figure 1.--This cabinet card is undated, but looks lile the late 1880s or early-90s to us. We see four children wearing skirted arments, noistly dresses. The Fauntleroy collars suggest that they were not taken before 1885. Some are obvious boys, but we are not sure who is who. The vhildren look to be about 1-5 years old. This means that they can not all be siblings. Presumably a cousin or two has been thrown into the mix. Note that except for the Fauntleroy collars that the skirted garments are very plain. The studio was Brinkley in Keota, Iowa, a small town in southeastern, Iowa.
We continue to see younger boys wearing dkirted garments in the 1880s. There were dressess, but there were some alternatives. Kilt suits continued to very popular during the 80s. Here age was a factor. We see younger boys wering dresses, but older boys were more likely to wear kilt suits. There were no absolute rulre. This was all up to mother. A new development was the Little Lord Fauntleroy suit which appeared in the mid-80s. Many mothers were enamored of the style creating the Fauntleroy Craze--a fascination that lasted into the early 1900s. We suspect that some mothers sped up breeching so they could buy a fancy Fauntleroy suit for their sons. It is difficult to date images by dresses styles, but mount styles and decorative trim is often useful. This is why we believe the Utah boys here were photographed in the 1880s, probably just before the eruption of Fauntleroy styling (figure 1). While the Fauntleroy Craze was primarily a suit style, we also see dresses and kilt suits done with Fauntlroy styling. This helps to date them. Dresses as a result of the popularity of both the Fauntleroy suit and klilt suit were declining im pipularityy for boys. And the ones we so see tended to be plin with the exception of Fauntlroy itens, especially large white collars. We do not see many tunics in the 80s, but there were some. Pinafores were worn by girls, but we do not see boys weraring them.
