Figure 1.--The children of this German family from ??? are all dressed alike. Te CDV looks to have been taken in the 1880s. The children are not identified. The one at the left looks to be a boy. The older child at the right is surely a girl. We would guess that the child in the center is also a boy, but a German reader thinks the child is a girl, primrily because of the facial characteristics. The children are difficult to assess becuse they all have the same short, boyish hair cuts.

German mothers had all sorts of way of coordinating how the children were dressed. There were a variety of alternatives mothers could adopt. Some times there were out outfits for the girls and other outfits for the boys. Sometimes the outfits for all the children were identical or coordinated in some way. Sailor styling was especially useful for this approach. Some mothers wanted all the children in exactly identical outfits. It was not considered proper for girls to wear pants, but younger boys could wear dresses. Thus if a family had older girls and younger boys, the etire family for a few years could be dressed just the same. Of course this could only be done for a few years, essentially until the oldest boy reached school age. We have no written information on this, but we have begun to collect some images.

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Created: 5:44 AM 1/1/2007
Last updated: 5:44 AM 1/1/2007