Figure 1.--This American boy wears a hairbow with a simple suit that has some sailor styling. The style of suit and small bow suggest that the photograph was taken in the 1900s. The boy's name is Lawrence Yale, he looks to be about 4 or 5 years old. Lawrence looks to be only about 4 to me. This suit may well be his first set of boys' clothes. Note sailor-style bow. Also notice the back placement of the bow, rare for a boy |
I had initially thought that boys old enough for plainer-styled suits such as sailor suits would probably be considered to old for hairbows. I thought most of the boys would be in dresses or fussy Little Lord
Fauntleroy suits. But in fact there are a lot of American images showing boys in sailor suits and other simple, rather plain suits wearing ringlet
curls and hairbows. I think this may in part be due to the popularity of
the sailor suit and the number of boys wearing them. Of course some
styles of sailor suits were not plain. Some suits, especially French and
Italian suits, could be quite elaborate with ruffles and lace trim.
I'm not sure when boys in sailor and other kneepants suits first appeared with hairbows. Boys in dresses were having their hair style with hairbows in the 1870s and probably ealier. Sailor suits were worn before the
1870s, but it was not until that decade that they began to be a m major style for boys. The hairbows and kneepants probably date
from the mid-1880s when the Fauntleroy suits became popular, but this
is just a speculation on my part at this time.
The available images clearly show boys in ringlets in the 1900s.
At this time hair bows were still being added to their
hair. The number of boys appears to decline in the 1910s as did the
fashion of outfitting younger boys in dresses. World War I (1914-18)
appears to have been a major dividing line in boys' fashions. After
the War in the 1920s and virtually no boys of any age were wearing jair
bows and ringlet curls had become rather rare. Only a few very young
boy wore hair bows in the 1920s.
Generally speaking, using hair bows were used for very young boys. Hair bows on the basis of available photographic images appear most common on boys from about 4 to 5 years of age. (Mothers might have liked to have put them on younger boys, but ther hair was often not long enough.) They were also worn by boys up to about 6 or 7 years of age. It was rare to use them for older boys.
Figure 2.--This American boy wears a hairbow with a navy blue tunic-style sailor suit. Click on the image for a close up of his curls and hair bow. |
Boys wearing sailor suits with hairbows usually wore either tunic suits with knicker-like pants or sailor suits with kneepants. By the time sailor suits came to be worn with short pants, the fashion of ringlet curls and hairbows had mostly passed.
One popular style of sailor suit for younger boys was a kind of tunic outfit. Most of the boys wearing sailor suits with hairbows are pictured in the tunic site. This was in part because these suits were very popular for younger boys. These outfits were particularly popular in France, but also widely worn in America. This meant instead of a middy blouse ending as tunic which extended
well below the waist. The tunic collar had middy blouse stying and
was worn with a sailor bow. Boys would wear knicker style pants that
were bloused like bloomers and not kneepants with buttons or knickers
with buckles that were to become popular after the turn of the century.
There were many different styles of these sailor tunics. Some were very plain
with traditional middy collar styling, either solid colors or stripes.
Others has elaborate ruffles, embrodiery, and lace trim.
Some of of the boys I have noted wearing these suits appear to be wearing kneepants, usually with long stockings. This is in part because older boys wore this style than the tunic suits. Many boys by the time they were breeched and were wearing kneepants had also had their curls cut, alieviating the need for hairbows.
One rarely sees pictures of boys wearing ringlet curls with short pants sailor suits, rather than kneepants or tunic suits. This is primarily because as short pants and kneesocks became more common in the 1910s, the ringlet curls and long hair were becoming less common.
Figure 3.--Like most American boys, this boy wears a hair bow with ringlet curls. I think he wears a tunic sailor suit, but am not positive. Note the white sailor cap he is wearing with a blue suit. |
Hair bows were usually restricted to boys with long
hair and in America this mostly meant ringlet curls. In other countries, such as France, this was not the case. Boys usually wore hair bows with uncurled hair.
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