Figure 1.-This unidentified boy in a post-card back studio portrait wears a popular tunic suit. The portrait is undated. Tunic were popyular boys' ear during the 1900s-10s. The AZO stamp box (two tiangles up and two down) show that it had to be taken some time during 1918-30. Given the tunic, this would mean the late-1910s or early-20s. Note the short length of the tunic and the tie rather than a scarf, all indicators of the late-1910s. The instep-tyle strp shoes also suggest the 20s rather than the 10s.The boy has ringlet curls, a style tht was much less common at the time thn during the late-19th century. The studio was Pope in Portland, Oregon.

We do not notice any short tunics in the early-19th centurry. Our archive, however, is very limited, a few paintings. So we are not yet positive about length conventions. With the development of photography at mid-century we have much more infomation. They seem to be shorter than those we have noticed arly in the century. Some look rather like shirts and buttoned up the font. We see a lot of these tunics at mid-century in available Dags which were much more common in America than Europe. We see relatively few true tunics. Nor do we see tunic suits meaning mtching tunics tops and pants bottoms. We do not notice matching pants which we did see in Europe. Our archive is still relatively limited so we are just beginning our assessment here. We have seen fashion plates with fancy styles, but they are not commonly represented in the photographic record nor do we see short-cut tunics. We do not notice the short-cut tunics again until the 1910s, primarily the late-10s by which time tunics were going out of style. Styliticlly it made a big difference. Tinics at lnee-length mean that the pants could not be seen to any extent, only a small bit at the knee. With short tunics, the boys pants come more into the picture and can be seen in detail.

Created: 7:51 AM 12/15/2014
Last edited: 7:52 AM 12/15/2014