Figure 1.--Here we can see three thin stripes on thid boy's cut-away jacket pants. Stripes were commonly used. This was a CDV portrait. The studio was Union, Broome Co. in New York. The portrait is undated, but looks like the late-1860s or early-1870s to us.

Detailing varied. Some of the jackets were heavily embroidered and the embroidery were sometimes followed on to the pants. Other jackets were very plain without decoration and this too followed on the pants. We note many pants were done with stripes. The stripes vatied in width and form. They might be a number of thin stripes are a bolder single strip, sometines in two colors. They seem to have been more common on the shortenef-length pants, both bloomer knickers and and knee psants. The stripes were a military style and quite a few of these suits were done with a military influence. The most obvious were the Zouave suits, but other suits had a military touuch even when not done as full Zouave suits. The stripes were the primary way of creating a military style on the cut-away jacket pants and trousers.

Created: 2:36 AM 12/30/2009
Last updated: 8:05 PM 4/4/2010