Figure 1.-- Here we ee a colorized portrait of an unidebtified boy wearing a briwn suit with an Eton coolar. The portrait is undated, but looks like the 1930s. The boy's suit here is shiwn as a patter. Tht is something a cilorized images picks up, but not a painting. Artists don't like doing patterns.

Brown was a very common color for boys suits, perhaps for some time the most popular color. We are not sute jusr why brown was so popular. It was a color not nearly as common for girls. This may have been a factor in its popularity. We are not yet sure about the early-19th century, but we notice brown suits in both the mid- and late-19th century. nd we notice brown suits in the 20th century, especially the early- and mid-20th century. We note quite a variety of brown shades, but this is difficult to assess because of the black-and-white photograohy of the day. We have to rely on colorized images which may accurately depict the color, but not the actual shade. Clothing catralogs mention brown, but often do not addrss the shade. There is also vintage clothing, but we have not yet archieved examples. Several of the 19th century color images we have found show brown shades. The 1859 image on the previous page is a good example. We had thoughts that these military-styled collar buttoning jackets were commonly blue, but this one is clearly dark brown. We also not brown suits un thge 20 thcentury. The suit here is an example (figure 1). The number of images, however, is very small. We thus can not yet make any valid assessmernt of suit colors.

Created: 5:18 AM 5/19/2012
Last updated: 5:18 AM 5/19/2012