Figure 1.--This American Daguereotype is undated. We suspect that it was taken in the 1840s, but the early=50s is certainly possible. We see the children of an unidentified family, two boys dressed alike with their older sister. Both boys wear collar-buttoning suit jackets with white collars and bows. They look to be about 5-12 years old.

We have very few images from the the early-19th century to help with our fashion assessmnets. This of course changes with the invention of photography (1839). Suddenly wee have images, quite number of images. Not so many as we will have later in the century, but for the first time substantial nunbers of images and extrodinarily detailed images to rcord fashions. We see boys wearing colla-buttoning jackets. The jackets are often not very well tailored, but we see quite number of them. Many boys did not have jackets and were photograph just wearing blouses. But as far as we can tell, collar buttoning jackets became popular in the 1840s. While these jackets seem to have been very common in the 1840s, we can not yet be certain because we can not yet definitively date Dags. Thus ee can not yet be positive. We see American boys wearing collar-buttoning jackets in the mid-19th century. The Dg portrait here is a good exmple (figure 1). The problem here is that we can not yet destinguish 1840s Daguerreotypes from those taken in the 1850s. And unfortunaely few dags are dated. We welcome reader insights on dating these imges. We think jackets that are not well twilored were more likekly to be 1840s portraits. A factor here is that ready-made clothing was not yet common and American was just begining its phemonenal rise. Many families still did not have a lot of money to send on clothes. Anothrr indicator is that we see better tailored garments in the Ambros that appeared in the 1850s, suggesting that tailoring is a factor to be considered.

Created: 1:34 AM 9/6/2022
Last updated: 1:34 AM 9/6/2022