Figure 1.--Best & Co offered a wide range of summer lawn dresses for younger children. Most were for girls, but the liiustrations and ad copy suggested that some were suitable for boys as well. This is one of the last advertisements we have found offering boy dresses. |
Dresses for little boys declined in popularity after the turn of the 20th century and had become much less common in the 1910s. We still see, however, some limited advertising in the 1910s, even as late 1918. The Best catalogs offered a wide range of dresses for very young children. There were two such pages in the Best 1918 summer catalog. A few wee identified as being suitable for boys. The dresses are for children aged 1 to 3. There are several that are listed as dresses for boys. In some cases the trimming choices were pink or blue, suggesting that color conventions were different then or that they were made for boys and girls. The boy dresses seem to have collars and box pleats. Also the Russian styled dresses all seem to be more masculine. This is one of the last such advertisements that we have found so far.
The Best & Company appaers to have been an important New York City department store that went national. They were seen as an upscale firn. They eventually had
branches in many states. They built a large store at 645 5th Avenue at East 51st Street, NE Corner (Wing on 52nd Street). It was located in Midtown Manhattan. The building was replaced by the Olympic Tower of Aristotle Onassis. I am not sure when the comapny was founded, but note that they were active in the 1950s and 60s. They varried an extensive line of fashionanle clothes. We know that Best & Company was a major U.S. depattment store chain, bit have little information on the company at this time.
Here is one of the Best pages. The heading stressed that they were hand made. I'm not sure just how that differed from the normal process of making dresses. I think the hand made reference may refer to the smocking and embroidering. These dresses look mostly white or light colors with some prints. They were for young children, age 1-3 years. Most were for girls, but some are identified as suitble for boys. Here the context is that both boys and girls could wear them. This is suggested both by the text and the illustrations showing both boy and girl models.
Here is the second best page offering dresses for younger children. These were white dresses, some with colored trim. They were especially styled for summer. They were for young children, age 1-3 years. Most were for girls, but some are identified as suitble for boys. Here the context is that both boys and girls could wear them. This is suggested both by the text and the illustrations showing both boy and girl models.
The dresses here are mostly for children 1-3 years of age. Some of the dresses are for slighly younger children. The dresses seen as suitable for boys seem to have been the 1-3 years sizes, perhaps the dresses for younger children were so obviously for boys and girls it did not need to be discussed. We suspect that the dresses bought for boys were more for the 1 and 2 year olds, but we have no way of being sure about this.
We note that quite a few of these dresses have trim done in pink or blue. There was also trim in color chambray, but for most of these dresses the options were blue and pink. We are not sure just how to interpret this. It may be that color conventions were not yet as firmly set as they are today. The choice of these two colors and the absence to us suggests that they were being used as gender specific colors. Thus when a garment is offered in blue or pink that probably means that it could be worn by boys and girls. Of course girls might wear the blue trimmed garments, but boys would not have worn the pink trimmed garments. Best does not comment on this, but it seems the most likely conclusion to draw. We note that there are instances of dressed descried as "boyish" with a pink option. We are less sure just how to interpret this. Color conventions were apparently not as strong in 1918 as they were to become. We note that there were garments done in pink for younger boys in the same catalog, such as boys wash suits. Examples are boy's wsh suits in pink pin stripes (item 208) and a wash suit in the French style with pink accents (item 212). Blue outfits were of course much more common.
Best seems to dress the simplicity of some of these dresses as especially suitable for boys. The dresses described as boyish lack the lace and frills of some of the other dresses. We note, however, that such fancy detailing was used on some of the was suits offered for boys in the same catalog. Many of the outfits for younger boys had frills, ruffles and lace. Apparently the idea was to make the dresses here more acceptable by not using the fancy detailing that was used for boys outfits that had pants. It seems that masculine conventions were not as firmly
adhered to at this time and reminds me of what some og the French HBC readers have described about French styles in the 1930s through the 1950s.
Another question we have is where these dresses would have been worn. We have seen photographs of very young boys wearing simple white dresses during the early 20th century. Most all of the images we have noted have been informal snapshots taken around the home. We do not note them being worn very commonly for outings or more formal occassions, althiugh admitedtly our image archive is limited. We believe that at least for boys these may have been seen as informal garments to be worn around the hime.
We are no sure about the social class conventions here. Notice the prices. They seem quite high for 1918. Many Americans would moy have been able to afford them. We doubt if really wealthy peope would have shopped at Best, but the prices here suggest they the dresses were for family in comfortable circumstances. We are not sure how the popularity of dresses for boys varied across the social class spectrum. We do not know, for example, if the childrren of the urban wirking class still wore dresses in the 1910s. We have seen, however, toddler boys in poor rural areas wearing dresses in the 1910s. Her social class may not have been as important as the tendency for fashion to change slower in isolated rural areas.
A reader writes, "It appears to me that mothers had much more say and latitude as to what was acceptable dress in 1918 than now. Which may be due to how slow news was spread back then in comparison to now. Newspapers were the fastest way to show images vs. TV and the Internet today." We are not entirely sure as to why the fashion of boys wearing dresses changed so rapidly. We discuss this issue on the main HBC dress page. We think it is certainly true that one reason that mothers had so much lattitude in the 19th century concerning children's dress was that mass media had not yet developed. And our reader is correct that the development of mass media was a factor in hardening gender conventions and in reducing the range of clothing she could select. There were other factors of course, especially the developmebnt of public schools. We think that mass media, including magazines and movies had already had considerable impact by 1918 which is one reason why ads offering dresses for boys had almost disappeared by 1918.
The Best pages here are useful in that this is one of the last catalog references we have collected that offer dresses for boys. Even more importantly, the ad copy provides some explanation as to the features that mde the dresses suitable for boys.
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