Figure 1.--The portrait here is an image of a brother and sister. Their names are Norbert and Beatrice. The last name and date were not included, but it looks to be circa 1900. The boy looks to be 4-5 years old and the girl 7-8 years old. This probably the largest hair bow I have seen on a boy. Even so his sister's hair bow is larger. Image courtesy of the RG collection. |
Small hairbows were rarely the case for girls which sometimes wore quite large hair bows. One does not normlly see old photographs of girls with hair bows so small that they are difficult to see. Others are larger and clearly visible. Boys' bows, however, never reached any where near the size of girls' bows. Girls' hair bows were tied from much wider ribbon and cut at greater length. Boys usually did no have hair bows, but when they did they were quite small, especially when compared to those worn like their sister. We note a few images of boys with large hairbows. We note, though that if they had sisters, the sister's hair bow was almost always larger.
The portrait here is an image of a brother and sister (figure 1). Their names are Norbert and Beatrice. The last name and date were not included, but it looks to be circa 1900. The boy looks to be 4-5 years old and the girl 7-8 years old. This probably the largest hair bow I have seen on a boy. Even so his sister's hair bow is larger. The boy has long dark ringlets.
His hair is parted on the side with the bow on the right side of his head. It is hard to tell if the girl's hair is curled. Her hair is parted in the middle and tied with a large bow in the back. The boy wears a white tunic suit with knicker pants above the knees. The maybe
his first pants outfit. His sister wears a white dress. Note the sandals on the chldren's footwear. The hair styles here are not only interesting because of the hairbows, but the hair styles them selves. Note that Nobert has ringlets curls with a side part. His sister's hair is done very differently, with braids curled on top of her head..
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