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We do not know much about girls clothing in individual countries. Until the 1960s this primarily mean dresses. We do not know dress styles varied chronologically or by country. We keep hoping a reader will assist us with this enterprise. In the interim we will begin to collect images and information from various countries. There are quite a number of images archived in the HBC site that can be useful here. We will eventually index the outfits being collected in the chronology section by countries. We will wait, however, until we have a more extensive number of entries in the chronological section. Here there are both HBC pages with discusss girls and children's clothing.
American girls like girls in other countries wore dresses throughout the 19th and much of the 20th century. We do not kow a great deal about dresses at this time. We believe dress styles were largely set in Europe throughout the 19h century. We want to develop information on fashion trends over time. We also want to see how girls' dress styles compared to adult women's styles. This will be very useful in improving our ability to date old photographs, mny of which are not dated. Not only did girls wear dresses in the 19th century, but so did younger boys. Girls continued to wear dresses in the 20th century. Only after World war II do we commonly see girls wearing other garments. Here American girls led the way for a trend that would be followed in ther countries. Grdually in the 20th century it became popular for girls to wear boys' styles like shirts and jeans. In sharp contrast to the 19th century, boys' did not wear girls' styles.
Englan was particularly important in setting boy's fashion. It was not quite as important for girl's fashions, but still important because of the development of the fabric and garment industry. Rngland also influenced styles in its many colonies. It was England which established many school uniform styles. We have a page on English girls' underwear.
We believe that the French were very important in establishing dress styles throuhout the 19th century. Thus France was a major factor in girl's clothing. This is similar to how the British played a major role in men and boys' clothing.
We note German sisters in the 1920s.
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