Figure 1.--This portrait shows an unidentified Paris boy wearing his school smock, probably in the 1900s. The portrait is undatedm but th cabinet card mount suggests the 1900s decade. The French source uses the term blouse d'écolier. It is unsual for a French school child to have theirportrait taken wearing their school smock. There are many school portraits, but very few induvisual portraits like this. The boy looks to be about 6-yers old. It looks to us like a first day portrait. The studio was Lucas Bédart in Paris.

The number of early-20th century images we have of French children wearing school smocks is fairly limited. We think this reflects a fairly limited French archive in general and not an indicator of prevalence. And many of the images that we do have are not dated. Thus we do not yet have a detailed chronology of school smocks in France. We do have a few dated images from the 1900s and 1910s. What we see is many, but not all French children wearing smocks to school. Many class portraits show many if not most children wearing smocks as can be seen on the previous page. Usually in any given class portrait while most children wear similar dark smocks, there are usually a few children wearing suits, sailors suits, or other garments. And at several schools, none or only a few children wear smocks. Thus we are not entirely sure just what the rules and conventions were in French schools in the early-20h century. Whatever the rules were, enforcement was the responsibility of the individual schools and varied considerably. Hopefully as our archive expands we will be able to better understand French school smock trends during this period.