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boys' skirted garments chronology United States 1890s
American Boy Skirted Garments: Chronology--The 1890s
Figure 1.--This cabient card portraot because of the miubt almost certainly was taken in the 1890s.b It shows four unidentified children about 1-10 years of age. The two niddle children are boys which you can tell by the side part. They look to be about 3-5 years old. The younger boy wears a likt suit. The older boy appears to be wearing a plaid dress--althoiugh we can be sure because his cap obsures the waistline. The cap is a Sherlock Holmes dear-stalker cap. They all wear long stockings and high-top shoes. The girl holds a hoop. The studio was Rote in Lancasterv, Pennsykvania..
The 1890s is the last decade we see large numbers of boys wearing skirted garments, espoecially the older pre-school boys. The convention did not disappear over night, but we defitely are seeing sewer noys wearing skirted garments by the end if the decacde. Kilt suits were still very popular. but we also see dresses. These were the main garments we notice. We are less sure about skirts, but this is prbably our major source of information is the photographic record. And this in the 1890s still meant formnal studio photopgraphy in the children were mostly dressed up. And a skirt was more of an informal garment. We also see tunics, but they seem more popular after the turn-of-the 20th century in the 1900s. This is a little complicated to tell because so much of the photographic record is undated, but this is our prelinimarty assessment. There seems to be a declining trend with fewer boys wearing skirted garments after mid-decade. But this is much more noticeable by the 1900s decade. We are not sure after centuries of younger boys wearing skirted gsrmnts thst this suddenly began to change in the 1890s. We think Little Lord Fauntleroiy suits were a factor, but the reason this major shift in boy' fashions occurred is still unclear to us or the rapidity in which it unfolded. Fashion historians tend to point to toilet training and the complicated garments boys wore, but this did not begin to change until well into the 1910s. So this is a still an unanswered question.
