Figure 1.--This caninet card studio portrait shows an unidentified American boy wearing what we think is a jockey cap and a long tweed cape overcoat. We are not sure about wheb the portarit was taken, biy might guess about 1890. The fact that the overciat completely covers up the boy's clothes makes it very difficult to date the portrait. The studio was Otto J. Frank in New York City.

In addition to actual capes, we notice cape overcoats. These were overcoats that had matching capes. This was a popular style for men in the late 19th century. Most of our examples are American, but that is presumbly because our American aechive is very substantial We believe that the style originated in Ebgland, although we have few details at this time. We see few examples of boys wearing them in Europe. We are not sure if this reflects our smller European aechive are a general attitude that the style was not apporpriate for children. We do note European children (especially in France and Germany) wearing capes, buy many seem more like separate garmens than done as an overcoat combination. Perhaps the most well known cape overcoat is the one worn by Sherlock Holmes. Many illustrators picture Holmes in a cape overcoat, although we are not sure if the garment was actually mentioined in the Doyle books, perhaps some of our readers will know. Cape overcoats were also made for children, both boys and girls. We are not sure just how popular these cape overcoats were, but we see a number in the photograohic record. We had thouht they were primarilly an upper-class style, but Sears marketed to the mass market and was very important in rural areas. We are not ssure about the chronology of these coats. We have found examples during the 1890s-1900s. We taink that they were also worn in the 1880s, perhaps evens the 70s. Here we have an example we believe dates to the 189os (figure 1). We note two styles for boys advertized in a Sears 1902 catalog.

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Created: 7:19 PM 7/23/2015
Last updated: 7:19 PM 7/23/2015