** United States Fauntleroy American kilt suits material
Figure 1.--Here we see two unidentified brothers about 1890. They look to be about 5-8 years old. The younger brother wears a velvedt kilt suit with a classic cut-away Fauntleroy jacket. He also has classic Fauntleroy ringlet curls. The kilt-skirt is very long. The boys' blouses are also interesting. The younger boy wears a clasic Fauntleroy blouse--notice how it blouses over the waistline. The older brother wears a button-on blouse which held up his panrs. The buttons are hidden by a waistline cover on the knee pants. The studio was Kottmann in Altoona, Pennsylvania. They offered an 'instantaneous process'. Tthis refers to only taking the portarait--especially avangageous when photograohing children. The dry plate negative had a very short exposurd time -- about 1/60th of a second. It did not become commercially available until the Eastman Dry Plate Company was founded (1884). This helps date the portrait to the second half of the 1880s. The dry-plate system had become so common that by the mid-1890s that the instantaneous process was no longer commonly mentioned. `Which seems to have maen the custoimer got his portraits while still at the studio.
American Fauntleroy Kilt Suit: Material
Material/fabric is something that is very difficult to determine from the photographic record. The Brooklyn boy on the previous page looks to be wearing a velvet Fauntleroy jacket and matching kilt-skirt. Velvet is one of the easiest fabrics to isentify froma photograph, but there is no way to be sure. Kllt duits ere also done in wool suiting materials, meaning fabrics used to maker suits, including kilt suits. The boy here is wearing a classic dark Fauntleroy kilt suit that clearly is not velvet, but we can't tell just what fabric it is. It looks like a lighter-weight, probably a cotton fabric. Here the differences involved both cost and seasonality. Velvet was an expensive material. Of course suits for younger boys did not require material. Velvet sas also a materioal suitable for cold weather, a relatively heavy material. It should be srressed at a time when Fauntleroy suits were popular, a larger portion of the Anerican population lived in orther states with its colder climate than is the case today. Velvet could be done in lighter weights, but the heavier weights seem more common. Of course an optioin for summer eer is to just wear the fancy blouse and kilt-skirt without the jacket.
