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Cut-away jacket suits by the 1860s were suits composed of matching items. This was a new development at the time. Skeleton suits had matching items, but then the comvention lapsed. We notice both two-piece and three-piece suits. The cut-away jacket suits came with matching pants. Some also came with matching vests. We see large numbers of boys wearing these suits in the photographic record. Before the 1860s when these suits began to become very common, the jacket and pants at first often did not match. This was often the case for suits in general in the 1840s and 50s. But in the 60s,especially the late-60s, we see mostly matching jackets and pants. Cut-away jacket suits except for the fancy Zouave outfits, usually did match by the 60s.
We notice a variety of fancy styles in the 19th century for younger boys. The principal jacket style by mid-century was the cut-away jacket. Suits with cut-away jackets appeared in the mid-19th century in a range of different styles. Many of these were very plain. The portrait here is an example of a very plain suit (Figure 1). Other suits were detailed with military styling. Piping, stripes, and embroidery were commonly employed in the detailing. The most striking such suits were the Zouave suits. Of course the best known suit style in the late-19th century was the Fauntleroy suit, one without military styling. The cut of the jacket varies as to how sharply the two sides separated. There were also differences in length. Fauntleroy cut-away jackets were especially small to show off fancy blouses to the best advantage. Cut away jackets were connected at the top in various ways. Some buttones near the collar. Others had tab connectors. Many cut-away jackets had breast pockets. The cut-away jacket suit was worn with and without vests and with a variety of blouses, both plain and fancy blouses. We are not sure about the age conventions involved as we ave few catalog from the mid-19th century. We see to see boys from about 3-8 years of age wearing these suits, but this is just an initial assessment. These jackets were normally worn with shortened leg pants, both kneepants and bloomer knickers. Quite a number of Ameican boys wearing these cut-away jackers are archived on HBC. A good example is Charles Fox in the 1860s.
The cut-away jacket suit was worn with and without vests and with a variety of blouses, both plain and fancy blouses. We do not see the fancy vests that appeared later that were important to display, Generally the cut-away jacket was worn by younger boys. We tend to see vests being worn by the older boys in the age range wearing cut-away jackets. We do not yet have a fix on just how common it was to wear vests. Here seasonality may have been a factor. Most portraits were not dated, but color and fabrics are often suggesive. We see large numbers of boys both with and without the vests. We have just begun to collect information on these vests. We do not yet have information on the styling of these vests. Unlike the vests we see at mid-century, the ones we see by the 1860s seem to modtlymatch the suit and pants.
Some younger boys wore wore cut-away jackets as part of kilt suits.
Cut-away jackets were worn with a variety of different pants or trousers. There was no standard type of pants. We notice long pants and a variety of shortened leg pants, both knee pants and bloomer knickers. The photographic record suggests that long pants were still very common, even for very young boys just breeched. Long pants seem by far the most common, but we also see quite a number of the shortened-leg pants as well. They were most common in the fashionable big cities. Some of the pants, especially those influence by the Zouave style could be quite voulminous. Others were more trim fitting. We note boys wearing pants that matched the jackets and some that didn't match. Pants that did match jackets were quite common in the 1840s and 1850s and the style was still common at the onset of the 60s. This changed during the decade. We notice most boys in the 60s had maching pants, but there quite a number of boys with pants that didn't match, especially in the early 60s. We notice both plain colored pants and pants with patterns such as checks. The plain pants were by far the most common and by the 1870s boys mostly wore pants thast matched their jackets.
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