Figure 1.--This cabonrt card shows three unidentified siblings. The mount and whicker furniture suggests the portrait was taken in the early-1900s. The children look to be about 1-5 years old. The boys wdea identical tunic suits with small floppy bows. We are not sure about the color of the suits. The tunics have collars and black belts. The tunics are short lengths and worn with knee pants and long black stockings. It is difficult to see what the younger boy is wearing, but almost certainly would have been identical.

American boys also wore tunics with knee pants. We are not sure at this time just how common they were. We believe knee pants they appeared and became common dedcades after tunics appeared about the turn of the 19th centyry. Knee pants appeared in the 1840s, but were not very common for some time, being worn mostly by boys from fashionable families in the big cities. Photography was first developed (1839), but the eraly images do not provide much imnformation on the pants worn with tunics. We know nuch more about this in the 1860s when we have a really extensive photographic record to draw from. We see quite a few boys in the 1860s and 70s wearing tunics. The boy here is a good example, ptobably from the 1870s (figure 1). We also notice knee pants worn with the tunics which became popular at the turn of the 20th century by this time knickers, primarily bloomer knickers, appear more common. Even so we till see many boys with knee pants. Here the knee pants seem different than standard knee pants. They seem to have used the lighter-weight material used for tunics rather than the heavier weight material commonly used for trousers.

Created: 8:53 PM 12/4/2009
Last edited: 8:11 PM 11/17/2021