Figure 1.--Ringlets were not as popular in the 1870s as was the case later in the decade and declined in popularity after the turn of the century. James here wears his long hair with natural curls. His hair is actually longer than his older sister's hair. Click on the image to see his brother and sister. Notice that James has front bangs, but his sister does not. The photograph was mailed in December 1907. |
American boys appear to have worn relatively short hair in the early 19th century, although relatively little information is available at this time. More boys with long hair begin to appear in the 1870s. Styling varied in the 1870s with boys wearing both long uncurled hair as well as ringlets. Presumably mothers styled younger boys hair with ringlets as it was a popular style for girls and women. They were hjust adopting popular hair styles for long hair as they adopted popular dress styles for unbreeched boys. Ringlet curls became much more popular in the 1880s, especially after the publication of Little Lord Fauntleroy in 1885. There was a significant social class component to hair styling. Working-class and farm women, often with large families did not have the time or energu to fuss with a boys long hairs, especially ringlets. So often the boys with long hair and ringlets are from affluent families.
American boys appear to have worn relatively short hair in the early 19th century, although relatively little information is available at this time. More boys with long hair begin to appear in the 1870s. Styling varied in the 1870s with boys wearing both long uncurled hair as well as ringlets. Ringlet curls became much more popular in the 1880s, especially after the publication of Little Lord Fauntleroy in 1885. After 1885, the vast majority of the American boys with long shoulder-length hair, wear it in ringlet curls.
Presumably mothers styled younger boys hair with ringlets as it was a popular style for girls and women. They were hjust adopting popular hair styles for long hair as they adopted popular dress styles for unbreeched boys.
The major styles for American boys with long hair in the 19th century included the following. These styles are discussed in detail in the style pages of the long hair section. Most of the illustrating images are American.
Available images show realtively little evidence that American boys wore long unstyled hair. Quite a few images show hair with wavy hair, presumably a kind of naturally curled hair. This topic requires some further investigation.
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Figure 1.--This boy wears a kilt-skirt with his Fauntleroy jacket and ruffled collar. He has front bangs and runglets, a popular style to be worn with Fauntleroy outfits. |
A girl's hairstyle was and continues to be her most important fashion accessory. Massive rows of tightly curled locks have in many ages been highly fashionable for little girls. Never was this fashion so widely esteemed than in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The extension of this fashion to the girl's brothers is a much more unusual fashion. Many Victorian and Edwardian mothers viwed their sons and their hair styles in the same light. For this reason, some boys in the late 19th Century and early 20th Century were done up in the same long ringlet curl styles worn by their sisters. Boys at the middle of the 19th Century wore generally short hair. By the end of the century, however, spurred on by the Fauntleroy craze of the 1880s, young boys as well as some older boys of 12 or even 13, were wearing long ringlet
curls just like their sisters.
The style involves sweeping a boys hair into a knot or bun on the top of the head. I believe this was an exclusively boys' style, although I still know very little about it. One HBC contributor reports that an exclusive litttle boys hair style was a part on each side and the hair in the middle made into a curl.
Although not as common as in Europe, especially France, some American boys also wore hair bows. Many of the American images of boys with hair bows show them worn with ringlets. This is thus a primarily decorative adornment. French mothers used hair bows as one way of keeop their sons' long unstyled hair in place.
There was a significant social class component to hair styling. Working-class and farm women, often with large families did not have the time or energu to fuss with a boys long hairs, especially ringlets. So often the boys with long hair and ringlets are from affluent families. This was true, of couese, in other countries as well as America. The question pertaining to natial trends is whrther there were differences as to the extent with which working and lower middle-class families followed the fashions of the upper-class trend setters. It is no accident that the noveau-rich of the American industrial boom in the late 19th century selected fancy clothing styles for boys (velvet suits with fancy, expensuve lace collars) as wll as ringlet curls which poor or even cash-strapped lower middle class families would find difficult to emulate.
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