Figure 1.--These three German children were from Marienburg Wpr. The portrait is undated, but looks to have been taken in the 1890s. The children are not identified, We suspect the younger child is a girl. With two older siblings about the same age. we do not think that the younger child if he was a boy, would have his outfit coordinated with his sister. Of course there is no way of being sure.

There are no written conventions as far as we know about boys in large families wearin dresses. There seem to have developed, however, some unwritten conventions. With younger families, all the children might be outfitted in dresses, especially if the older children are girls. In large families, all the children below a certain age might be outfitted in dresses. In both cases the mother might choose identical outfits. This is helpful to know when trying to assess the gender of the children in old photographs where the individuals are not identified. There are many indicatos that can help such as hair style and props. One indicator that may prove helpful associated with coordinated outfits is tht in smaller families we suspect that a younger brother would not wear outfits coordinated with a sister if there was a brother in the family. This may have been the case if he only had older sisters, but we believe not if he had an older sister and brother.We can not prove this and of course mothers were endlessly creative, but we suspect tht this was the case.

Navigate the Boys' Historical Clothing Web Site:
[Introduction] [Activities] [Biographies] [Chronology] [Clothing styles] [Countries] [Girls] [Topics]
[Bibliographies] [Contributions] [FAQs] [Glossaries] [Images] [Links] [Registration] [Tools]
[Boys' Clothing Home]

Created: 9:10 PM 11/9/2008
Last updated: 9:10 PM 11/9/2008