Figure 1.--We thiought this CDV portrait showed a boy and his little sister. The children are, however identified on the back as Henri 9 ans and Georges 4 ans. Georges age is indestinctr, but we think it is 4. Their last name is not identified. Henriwears a cut-away jacket and long pants. The cut-way aspect is limited. He has a stiff white collar, perhaps an Rton collr ans small bow. Georges had long hair with what looks kike a curl on top, but not done in ringlets. He wears a jacketed dress with what looks like velvet piping. He has a much larger white collar, but no bow. It is a little difficult to tell, but he seems to have a long white petticoat. We can see white stockings. The portrait was taken by Leopold Dubois in Poitiers. Notice how how Georges is holding on to his big brother. This is something that we would be less likely to see in America and Britain. We know nothing about the family, but they clearly came from a family living in comfortable circumstances.

As in other European countries, HBC believes that social class and wealth appears to have been a factor here affecting the extent to which young boys wore dresses and the age to which they wore them. Boys from wealthy families who were schooled at home, were more likely to wear dresses and wear them to an earlier age than children from more families with more modest circumstances. A boy tutored at home had fewer contacts with other boy and thus was not pressured by other boys to conform to more established clothing conventions. It is very likely, for example that the De Lesseps children pictured above were tutored at home (figure 1). HBC recalls these experiences of Paul whose mother sent him to school in curls. A reader comments, "Boys that were tuored obviously came from affluent families. Boys who were tutored may have worn dresses longer or as discussed elsewhere in HBC by a Alain-Paul, a boy who grew up in France in the late 40s and 50s. He wore rompers longer than his brother who lived in Paris went to school and the brother wore smocks though most of the children attending schools were less affluent and as a result the brother wore the school smocks like most other French boys at the time." We are less sure about the middle-class. A factor here is that we have portraits of boys from affluent families, we have very few images of boys from working class families. The photographic record in France seems much more sketchy than is the case for America. Thus we are not yet prepared to assess trends for the different.

Created: 12:49 AM 3/19/2011
Last updated: 12:49 AM 3/19/2011