Figure 1.-- This cabinet card portrait shows the five children of an unidentified affluent English family. They look to be about 1-14 years of age. The middle girl wearsa sailor dress. The boy has a soft collar rather than an Eton collar which was common at the time. The younger child at the left wears what looks like a pinafore to us. He looks to be a boy about 5 years old. The portrait is undated, but the mount style suggests it was taken about 1900-05. The studio was Lock in Bristol. A reader writes, "With the position of the baby being held up by the older brother and possibly older sister and the younger child (who may be a boy) is wearing an outfit that seems to match the baby and creates a flow in the picture. I remember when our children had a portrait taken when my son was 6 months old or so, he wore a dress to match my daughter who was 3 years older. So this may be more about that than anything else."

Pinafores were still commonly worn at the turn-of-the 20th century. School portaits are some of our best indicators concerning the popularity of pinafores, at least for girls. And unlike studio portaits, the children do not seem to have dressed up especially for the portraits. We note school images at the turn-of the 20th century with just about all of the girls wearing pinafores. Girls continued commonly wearing pinafores in the early-20th century, at least through the World War I era. Pinafors became much less common for boys which was more a matter of homewear. This is difficult to follow as pinafores in most cases were not worn to the studios, but we have a few images. Mothers wanted to dress up the children for portraits. We are not sure how the characteristics of pinafores such as color and style varied over time. Because pinafores were a protective garment, the popularity declined after World War I. We believe that when labor saving advances made in laundry were an importnt factor here. The declining relative cost of clothing was probably another factor. School portaits clearly show the very sharp change in the popularity of pinafores after World War I.

Created: 10:03 AM 2/17/2016
Last updated: 9:17 PM 2/22/2016