Figure 1.--Here mother had dressed her son up in a fancy blouse with a large ruffled collar. The portrait was taken in 1927. Fancy blouses like this were no longer very common in the 1920s, but were still worn for formal occassions. |
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After World War I, we note shirts began to replace blouses for boys, especially for older scool-age boys. Catalogs during the decade offered both blouses and shirts, but we see more and more shirts being offered by the end of the decade. We still see blouses for school-age boys in the early 20s, but by the late 20s they had become primarily wrn by younger boys. The button-on style was popular in the inter-war era. Boys commonly wore shirt styles with these button-on suits, but the shirts did not have tails. By the 1920s school-age boys began to object to the idea of wearing bloses. They wanted to wear shirts with more adult styling. A good reflection of that trend was a Procter & Gamble ad in 1926. By the end of the decade, atheterm "blouse" had the destincr ontation as a garment for girls or very young boys. It is only after World War I (1914-18) that blouses with somewhat modified Eton collars for younger boys begin to appear. Wedo see some very young boys wearing blouses with large sometimes ruffled collars. They were, however, mostly worn for formal occassions such as wedding or perhaps formal portraits. We do not note them being very commonly worn.
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