American Fauntleroy Blouses: Features--Collars

Figure 1.--This cabinet portrait shows an unidentified American boy. He looks to be about 5 years old. He has a huge squre Fauntleroy collar. Therec are no ruffles, but the collar has extenive cut out lace and a lare frilly front. There are large matching fronts. The studio was Baker of Cranville, New York. The portrait is undated, but we would guess was taken about 1900-05, in part because of the mount style and the whicker furniture.

Fauntleroy bloused had attached collars, both lace and ruffles. The collar was only one of thge many features of the Fauntlkeroy blouse , but it was by far the most proiminant feature bd fominasted the look of the blouse. The collars varied in size and shape. Some comined lace and ruffles. There were differences in the size of the collars. We nore very large collars, especially the ruffled collars or the ruffled collars with lace mixed in with the ruffles. The cost of real lce limited thesize of lace collsrs somrwht.The size of the collars and the mixture of lce abnd ruffles provided for endless variation. Many blouses had a back flap rather like a sailor blouse. The ruffles could have lace mixed in, often near the edges. Some of these blouses had huge collars. The collar and blouse were a very important part of the Fauntleroy style as were the cuffs. The Fauntleroy blouse that the boy on the previous page wears is a good example of this. The boy here is another good example (figure 1). Note that you can see much of the jacket. On many Fauntleroy outfits the jacket was smaller and was almost entirely obscured by the jacket. Sometimes you could almost not see the jacket, The really large collars did not begin until 1885 when the publication of Mrs. Burnett's book lasunched the Funtleroy craze. And we contiunue to see these large collkrs into the 1900s, especially the early 1900s.

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Created: 12:10 AM 5/6/2011
Last updated: 7:08 AM 4/5/2012