Figure 1.--This cabinet card porrait shows an unidebtified Boston boy wearing a double-breasted suit with knee pants. He has perfectly combed hair. He looks to be about 13-years old. Note the banded collar. The portrait is undated, but the mount suggess the 1890s. Many double-breasted suits were done wih vess, but these 19th century suits wih high-set lapels don't seem to have vests. This boy has a finger on his watch chain. The studio was Hardy in Boston. There are books in he lower left hand corner of theportraity to suggest scholarship. You rarely see that in portraitys of girls in the 19th century. This was changing by the end of the century, but is an indication as to how parents at the time attached much more importance to educating sons than daughters.

The three basic garments comprising double-breasted suits are the jacket, vest, and pants. The styling is virtually all in the jacket with the military-inspired double row of buttons. We see large numbr of boys wearing these jacket, especially around the turn of the 20th century. The older boy on the previous page is wearing knee pants as part of his suit. Another good example is Tom Eperson who wears knickers as part of his double-breasted suit 1908-09. Our initial assessment is that vests are less common with double-breasted suits, probably because when they were most popular because the lapels tended to be large or set high on the jacket as we see here (figure 1). As more of the front is coverd with double-breasted styling, perhaps vests were seen as overkill. All the different kinds of pants were worn wih double-breasted jackets. This basically depended on the popular type of pants at the time. And because double-breasted suits were most popular around the turn of the 20th century (1890s-1900s). This means we mostly see them being worn with knee pants and knickers. By the time long pants became increasingly popular we see fewer boys wearing double-breasted jackets and single-breasted suits began to become dominant. A reader writes, "This is an interesting image. The boy's personality really come out in the portrait. The very dapper boy is wearing longish knee pants with his doble-breated jacket. For some reason there are four buttons down the side. I don't remember ever seeing that before, three buttons were realtively standard. And his watch fob end is visible usually that is hidden. I think his fiddling with his fob represents that the fob was a sign of his growing up along with other adult features of his outfit, especially the restrained collar and neckwear in the middle of the Fauntleroy era."

Created: 4:31 AM 1/6/2025
Last updated: 2:30 PM 1/6/2025