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Little Lord Fauntleroy suits: American garments blouses Fauntleroy blouse features wrist cuffs
American Fauntleroy Blouses: Features--Wrist Cuffs
Figure 1.--Here we see five children of an unidentified family. There are two girls and three boys. The two boys wearing Fauntleroy blouses and bows look to be avout 10-13 years old. Notice that the blouses have large frilled collars, but no wrist cuffs. The boys wear regular double-breasted knee pants suits with black long stockings. The cabinent card portraits are undated, but look like the late-1890s. The studio was G.C. Ragan in Hastings, Nebraska. A reader has provided a detailed assessment of this family portrait.
Some Fauntleroy blouses had matching wrist cuffs. An almost obligatory element of a Fauntleroy suit was a large, fancy collar. Many, but not all Fauntleroy suits had matching, equally fancy wrist cuffs. Actually these were not part of the suits, but the blouses worn with the suits. A classic Fauntleroy blouse also had lace and ruffled trim to match the collar trim. The cuffs varied greatly in length. They extended well beyond the boys hand and were designed to be folded back over the sleeves of the jacket Sometimes the cuff trim extended back to the boys elbow. This was not obligatory. We see many portraits with boys in fancy Fauntleroy suits without fancy cuffs. The fancy cuffs, however were very common. HBC is not sure about the precise construction of the fancy wrist cuffs which were often worn to match the ruffled or lace collars in Fauntleroy outfits. Some of the collars and cuffs were part of fancy blouses. This meant that the blouses were made with sleeve lengths exctending well beyond the boy's wrists. They were then doubled over adter he put on his jacket so they cobered the lower portion of the jacket sleeve. Others appear to have been separate items sewn on to the jackets. One HBC contributor believes that they were worn with cuff links. HBC is less sure of this and has not noticed cufflinks in either the photographic records of these suits or mentioned in the accompanying literature. The cuffs of course normally wee part of the blouse. Unlike the collars which could be pinned on, the cuffs were simply extensions of the blouse sleeves that were turned over. As the Fauntleroy style was especially popular in America, most of the examples we have found are American. Quite a few were done with these wrist cuffs. Most of the fancy blouses had them. A good example is Roy Swanson in the early-1900s. The standard Fauntleroy blouse was done with the matching cuffs. But we do see some without them. A good example is an unidentified boy, we think in the late-1890s.
