Figure 1.--Hair bows became less fashionable for boys after the turn of the century, but continued to be fashionable in France until World War I. I am not sure why this was, perhaps HBC readers can offer some insights. This child is clearly a boy because he is wearing a boyish suit and collar bow--an unlikely outfit for a girl. |
Some limited details are available on French hair bows. Much of this information is based on conclusions drawn from the examination of available
images. HBC has been able to find little written information describing this fashion.
French fashion magazines recommended long curly hair decorated with hair ribbons for both little boys and girls. I have yet been able to find any of the articles, but hope to eventually be able to locate
some and include the text in HBC.
I do not know how common it was early in the 19th Century. It may
not have been very common because I think long hair and the use of hair bow
in general was limited in the early 19th Century. The use of hair bows ]
for boys followed the general fashion of long hair for boys and bows for
girls. The fashion of hair bows bows for boys increased in popularity as it became increasingly fashionable for girls to wear hair bows. It does appear to have been an accepted practice in the latter part of the 19th and early 20th Centuries.
One unanswered question is how common it was for French boys to wear hair bows. This is not a subject HBC can anser with any certainty at this time. The number of available images clearly suggest that it
was not a rare or isolated fashion. It would be limited to a fraction of the boys with long hair who were in turn only a fraction
of boys. In addition the number varied with the age of the boys
and the specific chronological period. Another factor is social class,
as described below, may have further reduced the number of boys involved.
As mentioned above, always boys still in dresses and
long hair might wear hair bows. Unlike America where many boys with long hair had it done up in ringlets, this does not seem to have been as common in France. The bow thus surved a utilitarian purpose of keeping the
child's hair in place. Many of the images of boys in dresses and smocks are difficult to identify as they look so like girls. This is a special
problem in France, because even after brrecing, boys commonly wore smocks
and are thus difficult to identify.
Some boys even appeared to be kept in long hair and
hair bows after they graduated to Fauntelroy and other fancy suits. These are of course the easiest to identify. While boys in the 19th and early 20th Centuries wore dresses and smocks, girls would have never worn kneepants suits.
A HBC contributor reports that French families in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries were much more private than American families. A French boys interaction with his peers, especially
boys in affluent families, would thus be much more
formal and much more controlled by his parents.
The hair bows of French boys appeard to have been tied much like their
American cousins. They were mostly tied on top the head and to the side.
HBC had thought they were not tied at the back. A HBC contributor
reports that boys also wore hair bows at the back as well as the
side. If the boy's hair was not parted, the hair bow would be at the
back. The hair is pulled back from the forehead and tied. See the Renoir
portait on the page.
The hairbows for boys were much more modest than for girls. Boys' bows
were commonly slender ribbons tied in a discrete little bow.
French boys appear to have commonly worn colored hair bows. Red
seems to have been a
popular color. This varies somewhat from the American experience where
white bows were the most common.
I am not sure about ages. Surely the larger number of boys were younger
boys not yet of school age. Available imnages commonly show boys of
5-6 years of age. How much longer French boys wore them, I am not sure.
Clearly they were worn by some older boys as well. Some of these older boys
may have been schooled at home, putting less presure on the mothers to stop
tieing hair bows or even having the boy's hair cut. Even boys that did attend school, however, might comtinue
wearing hair bows around home or for special occasions even though they
did not wear them at home.
Available French images suggest that hairbows were not just for formal
dress occasions. They seemed to have been worn informally at home when boys were
dresses casually in smocks or for park outings as well as in party clothes.
Some accounts suggest, however, that younger school boys, while they might
wear long hair and curls to school, their mothers often did not their their hair bows on when they were sent off to school. Presumably the boys would have prevailed upon their mothers to save the hair bows for other
occasions.
a HBC contributor provides some insights. The French material is harder to assess since I don't know the language. One area of exploration may be French kindergartens before World War II. I've seen
photographs of large groups of children, some with long hair and some with short hair all wearing identical smocks and large hairbows. This photograph was around
World War I. I also saw another photo taken before
World War I of a private school class
in which the littlest children were in dresses and the older children in
knickers. Most of the children had long hair and one of the boys in
knickers wore a hair ribbon in his long curls. Many of the little children
wore hair bows. I don't know if this class had both boys and girls in it.
One of the older children was wearing a dress and looked like a girl.
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