Large White Collars


Figure 1.--This unidentified painting is presumably a Danish boy. (The painting was being sold in Copenhagen.) HBC believes that his portrait was probably painted about 1910. As the portrait is a painting, details of the boy's outfit are difficult to makeout. Note that he appears to be wearing short pants with long over-the-knee stockings.

Boys in the early 20th century wore tunics of various design with large white collars. Some wore rounded Peter Pan collars. Other boys wore stiff Eton collars. Other collars are more difficult to identify. They appear not to have the rounded Peter Pan shape or the siffness of the pounted Eton collar. This style seems most common from abourt 1900 to 1920. HBC has noted this style in America and various European countries, but is unsure how common it was in specific countries.

Types

A varietyy of large white collars for boys became popular in the 1870s. We note two basis types of collars, stiff collars like the Eton collar and soft collars like the Peter Pan collars. They were worn with various garments. Boys in the early 20th century wore tunics of various design with large white collars. Some wore rounded Peter Pan collars. Other boys wore stiff Eton collars. Other collars are more difficult to identify as there are wide variations in size and shape. The two basic styles, however, are the pointed and rounded collars. Some collars, for exampole appear not to have the rounded Peter Pan shape or the stiffness of the pointed Eton collar. The collar the boy in the image here is a good example (figure 1). It is a soft large white collar, but with pointed tips. The soft large white collars were generally worn by younger boys, but the stiff Eton collars were worn by a larger age range.

Bows

Boys in the 1860s often wore stocks, but we see small bows in the late-60s. Boys in the 1870s began wearing larger bows with larger collars. These bows sometimes reached extremely large sizes in the lste-1880s and 90s. By the turn of the 20th century some boys were beginning to wear their large white collars without bows and this had become quite common by the 1910s.

Chronology

We note white collars in the mid-19th century, but they were quite small. Gradually in the second half of the 19th century they increased in size. We see an American bpy Gordon Bently wearing a modest-sized collsr in 1879. The large white collars seem most common from about 1900 to 1920. They were worn in the early 1920s, but was passing from style by the mid 1920s. The styles continued to be worn by boys, but decreased in size. One continuing usage of this style was on school smocks. We see many Italian boys commonly wearing smocks with large white collars into the 1960s. They are still worn at some Italian schools, but noy as commonly.

Clothing

This large white collar was worn with a variety of clothes, nost commonly with tunic jackets or blouses. We also note them being worn with school smocks, especially in Italy.

Age

Boys wearing ththe soft large white collars vairred in age from about 3 to 10 years of age. This vaired somewhat, howeverm depending on the garment therse collars were worn with.

Countries

HBC has noted this style in America and various European countries, but is unsure how common it was in any specific country. We believe it was worn in France and other Continebntal countries. HBC is unsure, however, to what extent it was worn in England and America. We are collecting iformation to develop country trends. A good example in America is the Nethery boys in 1915.






HBC




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Created: July 10, 2000
Last updated: 8:30 AM 8/30/2009