*
national lace collar trends for boys -- England prevalence
Lace Collar Trends: England--Prevalence
Figure 1.--This cabinnt card shows a group of children without any indication as to who they are. Sureky they must be a school group with teacgers on both sides. They are 27 girls, a class size group, but what confuses us is the wide age range, much too wide to be a class group. The children look to be about 5-13 years old. The younger children are all in front and are much younger than the other girls. Perhaps they are a small private school. Over half of the girls seem to be wearing large white collars that look to be lace collrs or have some lace in them. The portrait is undated, but we wold say was takn in the very early 1900s, perhaps the late 1890s. We wonder if one or two of th yonger children in fint are boys. All we know for sire is that the portrait was takn by the West of England Photographic Company with office in Plymouth. They were a well-esablished studio. we have noted thir work since the 1880s.
HBC is unsure has to how widely worn lace collars were in England. And we see group portraits that show quite a number of children wearing large collars, many of which appear to have some lace. The lace collar was most prevalent with women, but in the 19th century children from families in comfortavke curcumsrancs wore them, especilly girls. This was mostly younger boys not yet breeched, but duing the Fauntleroy era in the lzte-19th century we also see quite a number of boys with lace collrs because of the Fauntleroy craze. Group portraits of course are more useful in demostrating prevalence than single portraits. We hope to expand this section a we expand our English archive. We have just begun to assess English lace collars and the outfits worn with them.
