Figure 1.--These twins wear identical collar-buttoning suits. Notice the Norfolk-like vertical elements on the jackets. The boys have Eton collars and the long knee pants. We suspect that these may be detachable collars. Note the small bows underneath. The boys look to be about 9-10 years old. The cabinet card portrait is undated, but looks like the early-1880s. The portrait was taken at the Genelli studio in St. Louis, Missouri.

We are not entirely sure what kind of shirt or shirt-like garment was worn with these jackets, but it is a topic we have begun to address. We see these jackers worn with and without shirt collars jackets. And we are not sure if the boy buttoned the jacket over a shirt collar or if he was wearing a shirt waist without a collar. With the collars buttoned you could not see what was worn underneath. A good example is the jacket worn by Jesse Bell in 1884. These coats had collars rather than lapels. But some were worn so that a shirt collar of some kind peeped out at the collar or was fully vissible, this and the style of thecollar varied over time. With the onset of the Fauntleroy craze (1885), mothers could not help themselves from adding larger, often fancy collsrs to these collar-buttoning suits. These collars began to get larger and by the end of the decade, large ruffled collars commonly covered up the collars of the jackets. Another issue is that therewere also derachable collars during the period that collar buttoning jackers were worn. We suspect that the smallar collars were part of the short, but that the larger collars such as Eton collars were delachable. The boys here look to be wearing detachable Eton collars (figure 1). The large ruffled Fauntleroy collars for smaller boys were commonly part of the blouse. Actual lace collars, however, might be pinned on to the jacket.

Created: 7:50 PM 11/16/2013
Last updated: 7:50 PM 11/16/2013