Belgian Boys Clothes: Cold Weather Garments--Capes


Figure 1.--Here we see a tin-type portrait of a family, presumably a mother with two childre, at least one a boy. We are not sure who the second woman is, perhaps an aunt. The children seem to be warin capes over dresses and Tyrolean hats. Tintypes were commonly takenh at low budget studios at arcacades or fairs. The portrait is undated, we would guess taken in the 1890s. Aealer reports it comes from Belgium..

We see some Belgian children wearing capes. They were a winter cold weather garment. Capes are a garment we do not know much about. It was aarment that was not very important in America. and we do not see many examples in England as well. We do see children on the Continent wearing capes. We do not know why this fashion divergence exusted. We do see caped coats in America and England, but capes for chilkdren were less common, especially for boys. We think that it was primarily a 19th century garment. Both boys and girls wore them. Most of the examples we have found are French where we see scholl children wearing them into the the mid-20th century. Belgian was a country strongly unfluenced by French fashions. anbd we have found images of Beliian children wearing capes during the winter. We are not sure how common theyu were yet, bit they appear more common than in america and England. Our 19th century Belgian archive is limited, so we are not yet sure about prevalence. We see capes of different lengths, but do not have enough examples to assess any trends. The cape was usually a simple garmenbt wuthout much decoration.









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Created: 8:59 AM 2/14/2015
Last updated: 9:02 AM 8/18/2015