*** United States boys clothes: button-on suits age trends








United States Button-on Suits: Age Trends

button-on suits
Figure 1.--This boy who looks to be about 2-years old had his portrait taken while seated on a child-size lounge or chaise lounge. Notice the fancy hir style confirming that the boy came from a fashionable family. Ther back of the card is also interesting. We see a card from the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad on the reverse. A sketch of the train is pictured including the engine and three cars. Very often railroads had a photographer's car, and, perhaps, in this case Patton & Dietrick, the photographers, operated in one of these cars. Even if not, this sketch is a wonderful piece of railroad history. The engine shown is similar to a photograph found online dated 1858. This photo of the boy looks to date to the 1870s. Photos of later engines online - say those from the 1880s - are quite different than the one on this card. Photograph galleries on trains were quite common in the 1870s and early 1880s. Most likely, this is the case her. the boy had his picture taken while on a train ride.

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. .

2 Year Olds

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.

5 Year Olds


6 Year Olds

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.

7 Year Olds

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.







HBC






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Created: 3:44 AM 8/17/2008
Last updated: 10:27 PM 7/3/2023