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We notice a range of accessories and gaerments worn with desses. We are not sure about the headwear. We notice some headwear styles, but do not have a complete idea of the different styles worn. For some reason the headwear worn with dresses is rarely pictured in portraits. We note some younger boys wearing fancy bonets. Plainer sailor hats were also worn. The choice of headwear was surely influenced by ages. We do not see girls commonly wear neck bows with dresses. This may be a gender indicator, but this needs to be confirmed. We notice a range of collars and neckwear. Lockets were common. Some dresses were worn with decoraive sashes, sometimes tied in big bows at the back. Leading strings were once common, but not generally seen in the 19th century. Long stockings were commonly worn with long stockings. Footwear varied. We note both high-top shos and strap shoes. One popular accessory was a 'reticule'. This was a young girl's 'drawing room' handbag. It was in what the young ladies of the day kept their necessaries - glasses, hankerchiefs, handwork etc. It was an indoor accessory. It had loops sometimes decorated with bows through which a drawstring was used to close it. We do not commonly note boys photographed with these reticules. For that matter girls were not commonly photographed with them. The only boy one we have noted with one is Frank, who wears a summer dress and matching reticule.
We are not sure about the headwear American bots wore with dresses. We do not have a lot of informatiion about the headwear American boys wore with dresses. Many mothers were more concerned with hair styls than headwear. Many of the boys still wearing dresses had not had ther curls cut yet. There was no accepted conventiion. Some mothes cut curls first nd other breeched first. A few may have done bothat the same time. We have found some oirtrits wghere the boys are holding their hats or the hats are somewhere in the portrait. Caps were les common, but most of these portraits have boys who have had their curls cut. We notice some headwear styles, but do not have a complete idea of the different styles worn. For some reason the headwear worn with dresses is rarely pictured in portraits. We note some younger boys wearing fancy bonets. Plainer wide-brimmed sailor hats were also worn. The choice of headwear was influenced by ages and the boys werating dresses were the younger boys. Thus we see the headear stykes wirn by the youngger boys.younger boys.
Boys just like girls wore overcoats with dresses during the winter. We have not found many examples of this in the photographic record. This is because mothers mostly wanted their sions photographed in their dresses which was the principal garmernt and not covered up with a heavy overcoat which was much less stylish than the cost. Thus we are not entirely sure what style overcoats boys wore with dresses. Overcoats were made with boy boy and girl styling. Younger children, however, might wear similar or identical styles. Dresses might be more voluminious than suits, especially at mid centuy, so standard boys' overcpats might not do. The paucity of images in the photographic record, however, makes this difficult to assess. There are more examples with girls wearing overcoats, but this too is not very common as mothers wanted their beautiful dresses to show in the portraits.
Collars tended to be part of the dresses construction and were usually not an accompasnying item. We note some boys, however, with pin-on or detachable collars. The bpy here seems to have a lace collar pinned on to his dress. A complication, however, is that some collars were
only minimally attached, alowing different collars to be used.
We do not see girls commonly wearing neck bows with dresses. This of cours was for a time seen as the height of fashion for boys. This may be a useful gender indicator, but this needs to be confirmed. We notice boys wearing a range of collars and neckwear. This included floppy bows. We see boys wearing floppy bows with dresses. This does not seem as common as was the case for boys wearing Fauntleroy blouses and suits. Our initial assessment is that these large bows were even less common with girls wearing dresses. This also still needs to be confirmed. This could be a useful gender indicator, but this needs to be confirmed. We are not yet certain about other neckwear worn with dresses. A factor here is that many dresses did not have collars and neckwear was primarily worn with collars.
We botice both boys and girls wearing some simple jewelry with dresses. Lockets were especially common.
Some dresses were worn with decorative sashes, sometimes tied in big bows at the back. Children probably wore the sashes with dresses when dressing up for special occassions. We note sashes in particular with white dresses. They were worn with colored dresses as well, but not as cimmonly. They varied in width. We are unsure about the colors. We suspect that many sashes were blue, but other colors were also worn. The blue sashes were worn by both boys and girls. We note both light and dark colors, but different emusions react variously to colors. Boys wearing sashes with Fauntleroy haf them tied so thecenfs fell down to the side. We do note note this with dresses. We know that girls sashes were tied in bows at the back. We suspect that the same was true for boys wearing dresses. Unfortunately, we have few back views of the sashes. We see these sashes mostly in the 19th century at least in connection with boys. After the turn-of-the-20th century we see fewer boys wearing dresses. Girls in the 20th century continued to wear coloredsashes with white dresses.
Leading strings were once common, but not generally seen in the 19th century.
One popular accessory was a 'reticule'. This was a young girl's 'drawing room' handbag. It was in what the young ladies of the day kept their necessaries - glasses, hankerchiefs, handwork etc. It was an indoor accessory. It had loops sometimes decorated with bows through which a drawstring was used to close it. We do not commonly note boys photographed with these reticules. For that matter girls were not commonly photographed with them. The only boy one we have noted with one is Frank, who wears a summer dress and matching reticule.
Boys wore dresses with a variety of undergarments, essentially the same as their sister, but there weee some differences. Rgepetticoats seem similar. Boys might wear plainr pantalettes. It is sometines difficult to destinguish petticoats and pantalettes as after mid-century children tended to wear both at hem level. We alo see boys wearing pants with skirted garments. This varied some what. There were two kind of pants. Some were rather like pantalettes, generally white and made in a lighter material than normal pants. We see these with early-19th century tunics. Other were more like proper pants. We see these with kilt suits, often done in he same material as the kilts they were worn with.
The standard undergarment worn with skirted garments was the petticoat. The prefix 'petti' means small. Thus petticoat meant small coat, in this case small dress or covering. It was standard wear by girls and women in both Europe and America. Almost always they were white. Often they were worn with pantalttes. Often it is difficult to destinguish between the two, especially after mid-century when the fashion became to wear them at hem level. Boys may have worn somewhat plainer petticoats, but this is difficult to tell. We do not yet have enough suitable images to make a determination. It was up to the taste of fashion concious mothers. A good example is 4-year old Wayne Mayo in 1903 at a time when the convention of boys wearing dresses was beginning to go out of style.
Pantalettes or pantalets/pantaloons are esentially long drawers worn to modesestly cover the legs. They were made in both plain and fancy styles with a lace frill, ruffles, or other finish at the bottom of each leg. They were widely worn by women and children (boys and girls) during the first half of the 19th century. The pantaletts extended below the hem of the dresses worn by boys and girls and the ankle and calf-length trousers worn by boys. In the mid-19th century it was not considered proper for even small children to have bare legs. In fact the word leg was not used in polite company, rather the acceptable term was limbs. The lacey pantaletts covered the legs to the ankles. One author suggest that some Victorians even put pantaletes on table and piano legs, I'm not sure if this is true. As the century progressed, it became more acceptable for younger toddler-age children to appear with bare legs, but older girls and boys still wearing dresses as late as the 1840s and even 1850s were expected to cover their legs with pantalettes reaching below the knee. Thus there are paintings from the first half of the 19th century of a younger sister wearing a dress with bare legs while her older brother wears a dress with lacey pantalettes covering his legs below the knee.
We also notice photographs with boys wearing both dresses and other skirted garmebts with pants rather than pantalettes. The difference is that pantalettes were undergrments made with a light-weight fabric. Pants are a regular garment madfe with suiting or other heavy fabric. A boy could wear pants with a blouse, but not pantalettes with a blouse. We notice pants more with kilt suits than dresses. We see quite a few voys wearing pants ith kilt suits, bit obly a few with dresses. We are not ure just why that was. Nor are we ebtirely sure about the conventions involved. If you are going to have a boy wear pants under a dress it seems rather superflous to have him wear a dress. Was this done just before a child was breeched or was it done even when the child was younger. Or examples of this combination is fairly limited so we are not yet able to specularte about the age conventions. Also we do not know if spcial class comventions were involved. we are certain, however, that the children involvedre all boys. Girls commonly wore patalettes with dresses, but neve oants like the boys. We are akso unsure about the chronology. We notice this in the 1870s, but we are not sure just when the convention began.
Both American boys and girls very commonly wore long stockings with dresses. American boys also wore long stockings with other garments like kilt suits and knee pants that exposed their legs. Long stockings were common in Europe, but almpst universal in America. Curiously the only major exception was children going barefoot. Here showing bare lower legs was acceptable, but with footwear we almost always see long stockings. Some younger children wore socks, normally white socks, but this was not very common in America. It was in Europe, although there were differences from country to country. We also see European children wearing long stockings, but we see many younger children wearing siocks. We are not entirely sure why this difference existed. Climate may be a factor, but we see long stockings even in the South. Thus we suspect that modesty or varying conventions concerning modesty were the primary factor. We mostly notice American children in the 19th century wearing long stockings with dresses. We have only limited information on the first half of the 19th century, but there is an extensive photographic reciord for the second half of the century. We notice light-colored stockings in the 1860s, striped stockings in the 1870s and early-80s, and dark stockings in the 1880s and 90s. Black long stockings were especially common in the 1890s.
Long stockings were very commonly worn by boys and girls. There may have been some difference in color, especially by the 1880s. But even as regards color there was much more comonality than difference. Children continued to wear long stockings into the 1930s, long after boys had stopped wearing dresses and other skirted garments.
As to footwear, America boys and girls in the 19th century when boys commonly wore dresses, basically wore similar footwear. We see primarily high-top button shoes. We see strap shoes in Europe, but theuy were ledd common in America.
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