Figure 1.-- Here we see four unidentified brothers. The boys look to be about 5-12 years old. They all year double breassted suits. The younger boys have large white collars and foppy bows. The cabinet card mount is pinked with straight corners which dates it to about 1888-1895. The portait was taken at the Cincinati Photo Co. in Charleston, West Virginia.

Older boys wore more modern-looking sack suits. Suits were a very important garment at the time. Boys did not have large wardrobes or stylish leisure clothing. For casual occasions boys might wear just shirt sleeves during the summer or an old suit jacket during the winter. Most boys wore suits to school. There were two basic suit types. We see both collar buttoning jackets and lapel jackets. The collar buttoning jackets were mostly for younger boys and declining in popularity. Both younger and older boys wore the lapel jacket sack suits which was becoming the standard styles. We see quite a range of suit styles. The two major basic styles were single- and double-breasted suits. A good example of the different types are the suits worn by boys at a Lexington school in 1892. Many destinctive style detailing appeared such as Norfolk suits. You can see some Norfolk styling on the previous page. There were single and double-breasted suits. Lapels could be small and set quite high, but this varied. We see both knee pants and long pants at the beginning of the decade. Knee pants were becoming standard at the beginning of the decade. And by the end of the decade knee pants had become standard with all but the older teenager wearing them. They were not quite as common in rural areas.
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Created: 9:15 AM 5/24/2019
Last updated: 9:15 AM 5/24/2019