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We are not yet sure about the age conventionsfor these button-on suits. The age range seems to be about ages 2 to 10 years of age. The portrait here shows a boy wearing a button-on suit in a large size for him to grow into (figure 1). He looks to be about 2 yars old. Many boys were not yet breeched at this age. We think that boys to about 10-years old wore them. The most common age seems to be the early primay yrars aboout 6-9 years of age. This is our initial estimate abd needs to be refined. This shows how the age of breeching was highly variable from family to family. Notably these suits were a fashionable style wore by children from families in comfortable circumstances in major cities where fashion was most important. The fancy hairdos we see on some of the boys helps to confirm that these suits were worn by boys from fashionable families. These well-to-do families were often the most likely families to delay breeching so it is interesting to see younger boys from these families wearing these fashionable button-on suits. We see pre-school boys wearing these suits. We also see younger school age boys wearing them. We are not if they were worn to school. We don't have extensdive information on 1860s-70d schoolwear yet. School photogrphy was just beginning to become established. .
The portrait here shows a boy wearing a button-on suit in a large size for him to grow into (figure 1). This is the youngest aged boy we have noted wearing suits. He looks to be about 2 yars old. Many boys were not yet breeched at this age. Notice he also has a carefully formed top curl.
We see many 6-year olds wearing these button-on suits. It was one of the most common age fior these outfits. This was the age that American boys generally began school in the first grade. And by the 1860s public scchools were operating in states and territories. We have an extensive archive of American school images, but we do not see a lot of Anmerican boys wearing these outdits to school. Allmof ourb iages are studio portraits. The problem is that school photography was not yet a well established tradition in the 1860s and 1870s. This thus limit s thev number of images er have been able to identify. And this was when these suits were the most popular. This suggests to us that these button-on suits were not widely worn by working-class boys.
We see quite a few image of boys we believe to be 7 years old, although most are estimates as most of our archive is undated images. Thus we can not be entirely sure about the images, but we would be surprised if we were off more than a year. This was an age that mny boys wore these suits, although we do not see many boys wearing them to school. A factor here is that we are just beginning to see the tradition of school photography beginning to be established when these suits were most popular (1860s-70s) during the 19h century. The age of 7 years was the second grade nmakking 7b year olds anong the youngest children at school. The suits were done with long pants, knee pantrs, and knickrts in the 29th century. Age as far as we can tell, the choice of pants with these suits had nothing to do with age. We see some 7-year olds wearing dressy button-on outfits in the 20th centuy, but it was the upper or at or near the upper age limit for these outfits.
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