Figure 1.-- |
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While the sailor suit began as a boys' style, gradually it also became popular fior girls. We are not sure if it was the mothers or the girls that were the driving force, perhaps both. The styling for proper sailor suits were identical for boys and girls. The only difference was that boys wore sailor blouses with pants while girls wore skirts. We see many images of bothers and sisters wearing the same styled sailor suits. HBC notes that by the 1890s that it was common in England for whole families to be dressed in traditional middy blouses. A good example here is an English family of two brothers and a sister in Deal, Kent. And younger boys might wear skirts as well, although this was not as common as other skirted styles. In fact, we see very young boys wearing sailir suita anbd pants that earlier woulf not yet have been breached. Not all girls with sailor styling wore sailor suits. We see sailor dresses in a wide range of styles. Some sailor dresses were styled tradituiinlly like sailor suits while other dresses just inclued sailor style features. And of course there were many variants in betwen those extremes. We tend to see more boys than girls wearing sailor suits. But girls wearung sailor styles was becoming increasinglky popular.
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