Boys' Neckwear Chronology: The 1850s


Figure 1.--The boy here is E.V. Grisen. He was 11 years of age and from Honey Brook, Pennsylvania. His neckwear is a little difficicult to make out. It looks more like a small bow than a stock. It looks to be black. The portrait is undated, but was almost certainly taken in the 1850s.

The stock continued to be the principal style of neckwear worn y men and boys. The actual type of neckwear is often difficult to make out in many images. The predominant form of photography at the time was the Daguerreotype. Quite a number of Dagurreotypes exist from the 1850s. The images are often not at all clear, at least the images we have found. Some dags are, however, are very clear. We note two London teenagers in the 1850s that seem to be wearing stocks which have been done in bow ties. . Many boys wore outfits with jackets that buttoned at the collar, thus not requiring neckwear. Collars were also normally relatively small. A good example is an unidentified American family. Some images show boys wearing neckwear looking rather like bow ties. These may be stocks that have been tied with small bows. The portrait of E.V. Grisen shows a boy wearing what looks more like a small bow than a stock. Like many Daguerreotypes, however, the image is not very clear. What ever the form of the knot, the neckwear is usually black. Bows and stocks were generally modest styles. One of the largest we have seen is an unidentified American boy in an ambrotype portrait. It is dark, but seems to have a pattern. Neckties were also worn, but do not appear to have been very common. We note an English boy wearing a necktie in 1851. We note a younger English boy wearing a tunic with a large bow, probably in the late-50s.










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Created: 5:11 PM 11/4/2004
Last updated: 6:18 AM 3/7/2008