Figure 1.--Here we see a CDV portrait of a French brother and sister from Blois. The girl wears a dress. Her little brither who looks to be about 7 years old wears a sailor suit. Both children have hairbows. The CDV looks to have a date on the back, some time in the 1880s. The children are named, but the available image of the back is very small. Put your cursor on the image to see if you can make the name out. AFrench reader tells us, "This photo was made by ' Albert Maignan et Fils ' in Blois. Blois is a French town located along the river la Loire with an impressivevbig castel from 16th century. Witten at the back is a sentence intented for the family, probably written by the boy. 'J'étrenne et ?? du Breton'. That translats as, 'I wear for the first time and ??? from the Breton.'" HBC suspects that the boy was breeched and this was his first pair of trousrs, but the writing is not clear enough to be sure.

We do not yet have enough information to confidently date the style of tieing hair bows in boys' hair. We believe it began at about the same time as hair bows became popular for girls which would be about the mid-19th Century. Before this time boys, except for the very youngest, wore short hair and hair bows were not commonly worn by girls. Unfortunately we have virtually no information on the early- and mid-19th century. We know a little more about the late-19th century because photographic images are so much more available. Our French archive is limited, but we have found a few late-19th century images to give an idea of popular syles. We also note illustrations from fashion magazines. The style appears to have been particularly popular during the late 19th Century (1870-1900). Many boys still in dresses wore hairbows in the late 19th Century. We do not notice the ringlet curls that American and English boys wore. We see French boys with long hairss and hair bows, but less commonly with the tightly curled righlets. Most of the school-age boys we see wearing hair bows are from the 19th century. After the turn-of-the 20th century we tend to see younger boys wearing hairbows.

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Created: 12:38 AM 10/15/2009
Last updated: 9:43 PM 10/15/2009