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We are not entirely sure of the conventions for wearing Eton collars. Most of the photographs we have of boys wearing Eton collars are formal portraits or school photographs. We are not entirely sure under what occassions boys wore Eton collars. The Eton collar was a dressy style. Meaning that boys wore them when dressing up for important occassions or school. But then again people dressed more formally during the 19th and early 20th century than is the case today. We do not know, for example, if boys when they came home from school took their Eton collars off. A factor here is social class. Boys from wealthy families were expected to dress more formally than working class boys. The relative rarity of casual photography makes this question somewhat difficult to assess based on the photographic record. A useful photograph is the Clark boys in 1887. They are with their pony and dog, but as it is a wealthy family and obviously posed, we are still unsure about the conventions for Eton collars.
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