** Danish boys clothes : families








Danish Boys' Clothes: Families


Figure 1.--This 1923 photo shows the four youngest boys wear identical kneepants blue sailor suits. The two older boys wear rather adult suits, although we are not sure what kind of pants the older boys are wearing. The two younger girls wear white dresses and hair bows. Notes how all the boys have short cropped hair.

Available images of Danish families provide interesting insights on how Danish boys were dressed as well as how other members of the family were dressed. We see many socuilogical and cultureal similarities with German families, especially familirs in northern Germany. Here religion and culktural similarities surely werre factors. The large German fashion and clothing industry must have also affected fashion trends in Denmark. Often boys of similar age were dressed similarly. Many families could be quite large, so there were often several boys of similar age. The sailor suit was one of the most popular garments, but by the 1930s was beginning to be worn less. Older boys might wear adult-looking garments.

The 19th Century


The 1830s

We have found one unidentified family portarit from what we believe to be the 1830s. The dealers suggests the 1820s or 30s. It is a naive oil portrait with wonderful detail and great period subject manner. It shold be noted that in Europe there were more trained artists than in America. The unknown artist shows the family with rosy cheeks and bright eyes in an interior setting, posing on and around mahogany colored furniture against dark green walls, exhibiting an air of health and affluence, although a naive portait suggests the family is not wealthy. There is even a brown dog sitting at his master's feet. Thev father wears a dark suit with a stock. The mother wears a dark dress with a colored scarfe and what looks like a lind of hair net. There are two boys who may bwe about 5-10 years of age. The boys have longish hair, especially the younger boy. both boys wear short tunics, the tounger boy with what looks like a small ruffled collar. The older boy has a more mature pointed collar. Neither has neckwear. The younger boy has shortened-length pants sworn with white long stockings. The older boy had long pants with his tunic. The younger bot has twon tone shies, something we have not noticed before. The older boy has low cut shioes, pevalent in the first half of the 19th century.

1860s

Austria and Prussia joined together to attack tiny Denmark in the German-Dajnish War (1864). The Danes were unable to resist the invasion by two of the great European powers and lost the souther half of the country--most of Schleswig-Holstein. We note a family portrait taken in the area seized-- an Rendsburg family. The portrait is undated, but looks to have been taken in the late-1860s. It is impossible to tell if tghe family is Danish or German.

1890s

Sailor suits were very popular in the 1890s. This seems to have been a general European trend. And Denmatk wascstrinly influenced by styles in Britain and Germany. Denmark is a very small country and thus clthing styles were strongly influenced by the larger European country. Denmark did not have a sizeable navy, but it did have a maritime tradition which may have been a factor in the popularity of the sailor suit. We have one unidentified family from Kjöge with a younger boy wearing a sailor suit and his two older sisters wearing identical plaid dresses.

The 20th Century

Denmark is a very small country and even Wven with advent of photography, we have a very small Danish archive. This we have only a few family images even in the 20th century.

The 1900s

We note boys in the 1900s wearing knicker pants with long stockings. Large bows seem popular. Children were often dress identically or in similar outfits. We notice a family photographed in Ranum, probably about 1900. We also see the Hansen family in 1909. This large family lived in southern Denmark, probably in the village of Burkal. Interestingly the family Nible is prominantly displayed. The boys wear fancy blouses and knee pants.

The 1910s

We have archived several Danish familiy phoitographs taken duriung the 1910s. Clearly onsrvable is how popular sailor suits were. Denmark fid bot have an imortant navy, we we were belierced danish parents weere infkuened by the Danish and German royal families. Denmark managed to remain neutral in Wotld War I abd unlike Geramny, the Royal Family survived the War. A major Here we have a portrait of the Sorensen family taken about 1913-14. In the center of the front row are the two parents, Soren Christian and Maren Sorenson. The others are their ten children. The younger boys wear sailor blouses with knee pants and long stockings. We have a photograph of an unidentified Danish family taken in the Danish West Indies during World war I (circa 1915-16). The Danish West Indies would a year or so later be purchased by the United States and become the Virgin Islands (1917). Given the tropical location, they are almost all wearing white. It is a Danish family, apparently with some German friends. At the front of the photo is an adolescent boy wearing a Boy Scout uniform. Presumably he is a Danish Scout. Also note one of the younger boys wearing rompers. He and his fathr arr holding a beer bottle. We also see the five boys of the Ladefoged family posded in a stair-step portrait. Four of the boys are done up in identical sailor suits. They were photographed duing the late-1910s in Sundsøre, Denmark.

The 1920s

Boys in the 1920s still commonly wore sailor suits, especially in the early 1920s. Often all of the younger boys woukld be dressed in sailor suits into their early teens. Presunably they would wear these suits to school. During the cooler months they would be dark wool suits, often kneerpants suits worn with long stockings. By the mid-teens boys would begin to wear increasingly adult clothes. Younger school-age boys commonly had their hair cropped. Here we see a Damish family in 1923 (figure 1). Notice that the younger boys are all dressed in identical sailor suits. We also notice images of the Bohr family in the 1920s-30s.






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Created: September 18, 1998
Last updated: 7:32 PM 12/13/2021