Figure 1.--This cabinet photo show three children in old-fashioned bathing suits. Note the spades and pails. The matching suit looks to be tunics and knee pants swith saolor style detailing. They also wear dark long stockings for the portrait. I'm not sure how common that was at the beach. The portrait was taken by the Eaton studio at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. We would gues the portrait was taken about 1890. The children look like boys, although the center child may be a girl. Click on the image for a fuller discussion.

We have very little information on 19th century bathing suits at this time. What little we know cones from studio portraits. Here we seen children wearing matching bathing suits with tunic tops done with sailor styling, probably in the 1890s (figure 1). Some children, especially girls, even wore long stockings when swiming. Early bathing suits were often made as two-piece suits. This did not begin to change until after World war I (1914-18), but even in the 1920s and 30s men and boys often had bathing costumes with singlet-type shirts. These wre made as one-piece suits. A reader writes, " I think both styles were available very early in the 20th century, but the one-piece style became more common in the 1920s and 30s. But when I was growing up, one could still see both. However, the loose top worn over the trunks (as in the Indiana photo) was not common then. I remember that at the country club where my parents used to take me swimming in the 1930s, it was a requirement for men and boys to have their chests covered when swimming. I think I remember a style of swim-suit with the singlet-style top attaching to the trunks by buttons and, later, by a zipper. But I wore a simple one-piece bathing suit with the top and bottom continuous like the Jantzen model. The boy's style was just a junior version of what men wore."

Created: 8:41 PM 1/3/2007
Last updated: 8:41 PM 1/3/2007