Figure 1.--Gere we we see two unidentified American brothers. It is a post-card back snapshot with a narrow white border taken August 17, 1917. The boys look to be about 5-7 years old. They wear identical light-weift summer suits. The collar buttoning jackets are done to look like tunic suits. The jackers seem to have wide collars, but are cibered by wude white collars and smll floppy bows. We are not sure about their hats, but are probably wide-brimmed hats with turned down brims. The jackets are done with the popular Norfolk styling. There seems to be at extra button near the top. We have no idea what that was all about. American boys mostly wore knickers in the 1910s, but some suits for younger boys were still done with knee pants--you can just make out the characteristic buttons at the knee hem. . They both wear white long stockings. .

The basic tunic did not have vertical front button closing like a jacket. TYhese might lso be clssified as collar-buttoning jackets, but the appearance is more like a tunic. Collar buttoning suits had generally gone out of style, but some younger boys still wre them in the 1910s and early-20s. Many tuics had side buttoning and we see diagonal front buttoning, mostly in the 1870s, but vertical front buttoning was rare for tunics. We see tunics in the 19th century, but in the early 20th century they were particularly popular (1900-20). They were done in a wide variety of styles and were worn for both play and dressy occassions. As the popularity of the tunic began to play out in the late-1910s we begin to see some front-buttoning tunics in styles that rather merge with jackets. They looked like tunics, but were actually front buttoning jackets. The age range was basically the same as tunics. Older boys wore standard suits with front-buttoning jackets. We only see a small number of these suits as in the 1920s, tunics quickly went out of fashion and boys began wearing actual standard suits.

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Created: 8:07 AM 6/16/2024
Last edited: 8:07 AM 6/16/2024