Figure 1.--This French postcard was staged in the late 1920s and actually mailed in 1927. I'm not sure why the girls are teasing the boy. Notioce how the curls have some curls with their short hair, while the boy wearing bangs has straight hair. This was a postally used postcard. Click on the image to find out what the message was.

Boys' Bangs: The 1920s

Bangs by the 1920s had become a popular style for younger boys. Boys in bangs by the 1920s, however, were beginning to wear more mature looking suits like sailor suits. For the most part, however, bangs were considered to be a hair style for girls or younger boys. As a result, the boys in bangs still also wore rather juvenile styled clothes. Bangs were still being used, however, to differentiate between boys of different ages. Some boys in bangs still had their hair over their ears, but by the mid-1920s this had become increasingly rare. Most boys in bangs were having their hair cut short above the ears.

Chronology

HBC at this time has no information on how bangs varied in popularity diring the 1920s, but believes that they were most common in the early 1920s.

Conventions

Bangs in the 1920s came to be a style in themselves. No longer were they just part of a lager hair style like a Fauntelroy style. Nor were they just the incidental outcome of a bowl cut. Mothers actually asked for bangs.

Styles

The basic stylistic differences were the cut of the front forehead fringe and the length of hair on the side. Boys often wore bangs with hair at their stide over their ears--rather the same way that girl wore them.



Figure 2.--This boy appears to wear a kind of Buster Brown suit, although the tunic is rather short, with a wide white collar and bow. He has classic over the ear Dutch boy bangs. While the photograph is a little difficult to assess, he appears to wear white short pants under his Buster Brown tunic. As the image is French, perhaps the boy is wearing a smock.

Clothing Conventions

Juvenile suits for boys like tunics or rompers were going out of style by the mid-1920s. They were, however, still worn--especially in the early 1920s. Bangs including Dutch boy bangs were a popular hair style with these suits.

Image Question

The HBC contributor who submitted the image here is not quite sure about the boys' clothes. He writes, "My guess is that the child on the right is a boy, simply because he has flowers in front of him and may be possibly trying to "court" one of the girls on the left, but notice how his hair and clothes have such a similar look to theirs that he almost looks as delicate as they do, rather than a typical rough house looking boy of today. His body language says another thing, though, mainly because just below the tunic (or whatever you call that) you can see what are definately short pants that are lighter in color. Also, if it were a girl wearing a shirt or dress type article below the tunic, she would present a very "unlady like" appearance the way the child is kneeling." The contributor asksm, "What type of clothing would you call what the boy is wearing. It sort of looks like a short pants sailor suit with knee socks, but the collar doesn't look really like a sailor top." HBC agrees that the child is a boy and believes that he is wearing a Buster Brown tunic outfit, although the tunic seems rather short. He wears short pants rather than the above the kneeknickers that were commonly worn in the 1900s. The fact that Buster Broen suits went out of fashion on the 1920s sufggest the photograph was taken in the early 1920s. The short pants and short skirts of the girls siggests that it was taken in the late 1920s.








Christopher Wagner







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Created: December 27, 1999
Last edited: October 6, 2000