Figure 1.--This unidentified American child wears a fancy dress, probably in the 1890s. This A-line dress has no defined waistline, but fancy baloon sleeves. Note the locket. The dress looks rather fancy for a boy, but the child certainly looks like a boy. Click on the image for a fuller discussion.

A dress has several different contruction elements. These include among others the neckline, collar, sleeves, yoke, bodice, waitline, and skirt. The style of these various elements might be adopted for gender differences, although boys also wore the same dresses as their sisters. This caried from family to family and chronologically. We will attempt to assess the various construction elements to determine gender-based differences if any. The problem for HBC is that we just do not know very much about dress styles. We will work on styles that occur to us, but if HBC readers who are more acquainted with dress styles have any suggestions here, we would appreciate your insights. Hopefully as we archive more images we can develop more information on gender differences.

Neckline

Necklines were quite variable during the 19th century when boys still wore dresses. We see quite arange of neckline treatment. Our information on the early-19th centuty is limited because we do not yet have photograohy. Here we are not sure as to the conventions, in part because the lack of photography limits the number of images. By the mid-19th century, photography provides us a great deal of information. We note many low necklines in the early-19th century for both youngr boys and girls. Age was certailly a factor. These low-necklines were very common for pre-school children. We are not sure if these low necklines were a kind of dressy style and that children for play and ordinary wear, had higher necklines. What we see in the studio portaits is of course how children were dressed up. At mid-century parents dressed up children for studio portraits. We see this commonly through the 1860s. Necklines bgan ro rise in the 1870s. And by the 80s, children had necklines around the neck. We note some European children with low necklines in the late 19th century, but this was very rare in America during the late-19th century. The necklines we commonly see at the end of the century are tight around the collar. We see various options for highneckline treatment. Two of the most common were ruffs and collars. We see some very fussy collars. The boy here is a good example (figure 1). There were a range of collar designs and suzes. This was the Fauntleroy era and Fauntleroy styling affected dress collars as well.

Collars

We notice a wide range of collars worn with dresses. Some dresses did not have collars while others had very large, fancy ones. We note both small inconspicuous coolars and large fancy ones. They were done in many different shapes. Here there were similarities with collars on shirts and blouses.n Many collars were done in the same color and material as the dress. Others contrasted with the dress. The collars varied greatly in size and style. Most dresses had colars that were a part of the dress. There were also pin-on and other detachable collars. A popular type of pin-on collar was the lace collar. We also see Eton collars. One popular style was lace collars. Both boys an girls wore dresses with lace collars. We note an unidentfied boy wearing a ruffled collar with his dress in the 1850s. We notice Willie Blatt with a very small ruffled collar during the 1870s.

Bodices

The bodice is the upper part of a dress above the waistline. The bodice treatment varied in part because waistlines varied over time. This the size of the bodice varied quite a bit. The collar, necklione, and sleeves or adds on to the bodice. Voluminous collars and sleeves could infringe on the bodice. The central part of the bodice could be done in many different ways. There were plain bodices. Two of the most common decorative treatments were smocking and buttons. Some designers used different materials in the bodice. There are many other different approaches such as princess, square, keyhole and V necklines. Decorative approaches include cutwork, quilting, heirloom sewing, embroidery, ribbon work, serging, color blocking and many other techniques.

Sleeves

Another major stylistic element is the sleeves. We note all kinds of different sleeve styles which changed extensively over time. Some sleeves were very simple, little different then shirt sleeves. Most were long sleeves, but we notice shortened lengths as well at a time that short sleeve shirts were not common at all. The shortened length sleeves varied from very shoer, cut at the upper arm. Other sleeves continued well nelow the elbow. Width also varried. at mid-19th century, wide sleeves were popular to accomodate blouse slleves that blouced out at the lower arm. We all notice puff or baloon sleeves. Here the length varied. Often the balloning was hyst at the upper arm/shoulder. In other cases it extended extenivesly down the sleeve.

Waistline Treatment

One important feature of a sress is the waistline. The waistline can be used to categorize many dresses. We note dresses made with both defined waists and dresses made without waists. Of course thwee are many other features of a dress, but the waistline treatment is one of the principal features. I do not know if there were any gender connotations concerning the two types of dresses. Our archive is not yet large enough to assess any such connotations. Not do we know yet how these different styles varied over time.

The Skirt

The bottom part of a dress is the skirt. The skirt of course was the key feature of a dress. Other elements were used on various garments. There were two basic approaches to a dress skirt. One ia a kinf of A-fram dress where is no real destinguishing feature between the bodice and skirt, but one continual combined flow of material. There might be a sash of some kind or loose waist decoration, but basically just one piece of material. The other approach is a well-defined waistline giving the appearance of a separate top bodice and bottom skirt. There might even be differences in the decoration, detailing , and even material. There were many different ways the skirt could be done. The skirt could be pleated and there were different approaches to pleating or the skirt could be ruffled a bit. Often the skirt was left plain. There were different ways of doing the hem. The skirt could be decorated in countless ways. There were virtully endless ways that skirts could be decorated. And skirts were done at many different lengths. During the times that boys wore dresses this was generally below the knee, but we see some dresses done at knee length. More common wre very long lngths. Some dresses for younger boys even came to ankle level. We syupspect that this was not fashion, but buying in alarge size that did not fit, but that the boy could grow into. We don't believe, however, that mothers were prone to do the same for their daughters.

Created: 5:58 PM 3/8/2009
Last updated: 12:11 AM 11/26/2014