Figure 1.--This cabinet card shows an unidentified boy wearing a white kilted suit. The large ruffled collar suggests the portrait was taken in the late-1880s or early-90s. He is holding a dark rounded-crown hat. Notice the hat and his stockings are both dark, probably black. The studio was Morton in Providence, Rhode Island. A reader writes, "The boy appears to me to be about 5 or 6 years old which is on the older side for the kilt suit. Also the kilt suit has a detachable lace collar, double breastedwhite jacket, picot trim cuffs and pleats on the skirt. The hat is hard to define." Yes the hat is difficult to make out. Our best guess was a rounded crown hat. We would guess he is a little younger, perhaps about 5 years old.

One of the most popular types of hats for American boys in the 19th century were rounded-crown hats. Here we are talking about hats with relatively small brims. Wide-brimed hats might hazve rounded crowns, but there the brim and not the crown was the major feature of the hat. As they were so popular, many boys worn them with kilt suits. Ilustrators often picture boys in kilts suits wearing wide-brimed hasts, but the photographic record suggests that these rounded crown hats were more common. Boys often did not have have their hats in the portraits, but quite a number did. There were different types of rounded crown hats with variying brim treatment. But based on the photographic record they definitely seem the most popular headwear with kilt suits, at least uin America. While vary popular in America, these rounded-crown hats were a style that does does not seem to have been as common in Europe, although our archive European archive is more limited so we can not yet make definitive assessments. Other styles seem more popular in Britain and other European countries.

Navigate the Boys' Historical Clothing Web Site:
[Introduction] [Activities] [Biographies] [Chronology] [Clothing styles] [Countries]
[Bibliographies] [Contributions] [FAQs] [Glossaries] [Images] [Registration] [Tools]
[Boys' Clothing Home]

Created: 5:41 AM 3/28/2010
Last updated: 7:01 AM 2/3/2011