Figure 1.--This London boy had his portrait colorized about 1900. We are unsure about the accuracy of the color depiction or how common purple was for Fauntleroy bows. |
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Purple was an extremely rare and thus valuable color. It was produced from a sea snail. Thus it was reserved for the emperor in ancient Rome. Only in the 19th century were chemical dyes developed for purple. As far as we can tell, it was not a color worn by boys. We do note an English boy wearing a Fauntleroy suit with purple bow and trim (figure 1). We are less sure about girls. Girls' dresses could be much more varied than boys' suits and other garments. We are not sure about the gender connotations. We suspect that as purple was a rather rare color that it was more associated with girls than boys.
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