Figure 1.--Here is the page on boys' blouses and tops fom the Rowe of Bond Street 1925 catalog. These are for boys 3-8 years of age. This is very close to the ages that wll-to-do boyhs were still at home It was commokn zt the time to begin sending boys to boarding school beginnking at about 8 years of age. This varied somewhat from family to family and school to school. We notice a range of styles, including some fancy blouses.

Rowe of Bond Street offered these suits was an up-scale retailer. The company for several decades set the standard for children's clothes. Bond steet is an important London retail clothing shoping district. Prince Bertie's famous sailor suit was reportedly done by a Bond Stree tailor (1846). Rowe was perhaps the most prestigious shop for children's clothes. They were able to use the line, "By appoitment to their majecties the King and Queen." This mean that at least some of the clothes for King George V's children were bought from Rowe. This meant a lot of the sailor suits which the King favored as wellnas dresses for the younger boys and Princess Mary. Of course it did not mean that all of the children's clothes were purchased, there but some were. One father writes about his first born, " I put his name up for Harrow and Eton and insisted that he be clothed by Rowe's of Bond Street, a ridiculously expensive store specializing in Spoiled Children's Clothes so fancy that they were suitable only for coronations -- and which were outgrown in a match strike." [Reynolds] There seems to have been another store in Gosport. The company tried to market in America after World War I, sending representives to important American department stores. And not just the purchaing departments, but went on the floor and advised mothers shopping for chuldrens clothes. We note this in Pittsburgh. A newspaper ad or the Joseph Horne Department Store read, "W.H. Davey representiing Rowe of Bond Street will be in our Children's Shops, tomorrow and Wednesday to advise and assist in the selection of children's fall and winter wardrobes. He will also present samples of children's apparel, not in our regular stocks for which orders will be taken." Pictures in the ad are a trim sailor suit in serge or cheviot for boys and a reffer jacket for girls. ["Rowe ...", p. 11.] This suggests Rowe representatives were active all over the country. Surely they would they done the same in the big northeastern cities. It also means that they were not only a retailer, but had a line of clothing with their own brand. And we notice one museum site showing items from the company that seem to run into the 1930s. This is apparently the company that made the coat that JFK Jr. wore saluting his father's casket (1963).

Sources

Reynolds, Jonathan. "FOOD; Nut Cracking," New York Times (December 22, 2002).

Rowe, W.A. The Rowe Journal: Rowe of Bond Street - Clothes for Young Men, Young Ladies, School Boys, School Girls and Children of Kindergarten Age (1925). Unfortunately we have not yet been able to find a copy. But the pages a reader have provided us for the English catalog pages appear to come from this book.

"Rowe of Bond street," The Pittsburgh Press (September 17, 1928), p.11. Note the date, just before Black Thurday and the Wall Stree crash leading to the Great Depression. This presumably would have forced the company to cut back on American markting.

Navigate the Boys' Historical Clothing Web Site:
[Introduction] [Activities] [Biographies] [Chronology] [Clothing styles] [Countries]
[Bibliographies] [Contributions] [FAQs] [Glossaries] [Images] [Links] [Registration] [Tools]
[Boys' Clothing Home]

Navigate the Boys' Historical Clothing Web Site:
[Sailor suits] [Sailor hats] [Buster Brown suits]
[Eton suits] [Rompers] [Tunics] [Smocks] [Pinafores]

Created: 6:18 PM 10/21/2014
Last updated: 6:18 PM 10/21/2014