Figure 1.--These unidentified Civil War era sisters had this tin-type portrait taken. The younger girls wear dresses with matcjing capes. The older girl has a military jacket. Notice the center hair parts. They all also have fingerless gloves. I'm not sure that such gloves had any practical purpose. The portrait is undated, but looks like the 1860s to us.

At mid-century we see American girls wearing very full-skirted dresses, often with several petticoats. We see both dresses and skirts. We notice various styles. All the dresses seem to have defined waistlines. We notice that matching jackets were popular which can be seen here (figure 1). In some cases the dresses were worn with hoops. We are not sure if you can tell from just a photogrph, especially if the petticoats do not show at the dress hem. We think the hoops were much more common for adult women than girls because of their impracticality. Some girls, however, did wear them. The older girl on the previous page seemns to be wearing a hoop skirt. We note some novelty styles. Some like Zouave dresses were Cuvil War related. We also see other military style jackets. The older girl here wears what looks like a Federal army jacket (figure 1). Even though photography, especially by the 1860s, provides us a huge quantity of images, readers should bear in mind that the fancy dresses of fashionable urban Americans are over represented in the photographic record. Less apparent is what was worn by more humble people znd in rural America. Most Americans still lived in rural America, although the cities were growing. And we begin to see more variation in hemlines, for younger girls. We think short hemlines for little girls were more common in fashionable Europe than America. Notice how long the little girl's skirt on the previou page.

Created: 12:53 AM 5/22/2014
Last updated: 12:53 AM 5/22/2014