Figure 1.--This catalog page shows the difference between blouses and shirts and how dominate blouses still were at the beginning of the 1920s decade. Th page is undated, but we believe it probably dated to 1919-21. Note how blouses still dominate the offerings. This helps to date the page as well as the floppy bowsseen in to of the illustrations. A reader writes,"In general, shirts are designed to tuck in and usually have a tail. Image 8655 clearly shows a shirt tail and is called a shirt. 6188 also appears to have a shirt tail but it is not as pronounced as 8655. All the other illustrations appear to be blouses with an even hemmed bottom some with drawn strings running through them being visible, others such as the middy blouse appear not to have a draw string. The only exception is 4875 which appears to be called both a blouse and a shirt. I suspect it can be made either way but I cannot tell from the illustration." The blouse draw srtring is illustrated with blouse (8133). The 'sports blouse' (9005) seem to be a simple blouse which can be done with short sleeves. (Short sleevs were a 1920s innovation.) Note that there is only one shirt waist (6188), a 19th century staple. We think a shirt waist was worn with detachable collars, although here the term is 'turn-down' collar. We have no idea what a 'negligée shirt' (4875) is.

American boys primarily wore blouses in the 19th century. Shirts were no common for boys. Although primarily seen as a girl's garment today, girls did not commendably wear blouses on the 19th century. Girls wore dresses. Although there were not a lot of other garments to choose from, there was a great variety of dresses. Blouses and skirts were rarely seen. Blouses in contrast were very common for boys. This did nor change until the 20th century, primarily after World War I in the 1920s. Blouses were still commonly worn by boys in the early 1920s (figure 1), but this had begun to change by the end of the decade. What was happening was attitudes toward long stockings were shifting. American children in the 19th and early-20th century wore long stockings. And the garments for holding them up (stocking supporters) involved below the waist attachment. This they wore blouses which ended at he waist or just below the waist. In general shirts had long tails to tuck in and made it impossible to attach the long stockings. Children in the 1920s began to change from long stockings to socks, at first knee socks. Socks did not need stocking supporters to hold them up. And elastic help hold up the knee socks. We see this change in catalogs and with boys tops rapidly shifting from blouse to shirts. At the same time see see blouses and shirts being offered for girls and not just dresses.

Created: 3:12 PM 4/22/2025
Last updated: 3:12 PM 4/22/2025