Figure 1.--This family potrrait is undated with three children and mother looks like the 1900s to us. The boys have identical crisp, white Eton collars, but their neckear (tie/bowtie) and jackets are different. Also their vests are different. The younger boy has a collar-buttoning vest while his older brother hjas a v-cut vest. The younger boys wears knickers. We do not know what type of pants his older brother wears. This may or may not be their school uniforms. They look to be about 9-13 years old.

We are not sure about the age conventions for Eton collars over the full chronolohgical range of the Eton collar. These collars seem to have appeared about the same time gthat photograph was developed (1830s-40s). his is a liitle difficult to tell, however, because there are so few photographic images, especially of children in England (1840s-50s). This did not change until the CDV became a major photographic format (1860s). With the CDV we have large number of images and can make an informed assessment of age trends. Our preliminary assessment at this time is that English boys wore Eton collars from school age (in some cases earlier than school age) to about 15-16 years of age. There is an association with schools, but the Eton collar was not an exclusively school style. Many boys wore them for dressing up when not at school. Still this was primarily a style for school agfe boys. We are talking about real, crisp Eton collars like the boys here is wearing (figure 1). We do not mean the smaller, and softer Eton shaped collars worn with junior Eton suits so popular in America. Eton collars

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Created: 8:53 PM 4/26/2018
Last updated: 8:53 PM 4/26/2018