Figure 1.--This is a cabinet card portrait of we think unidentified twin brothers. The boys look to be about 5 years old. The portrait was taken by Ediugen in Des Moines, Iowa. The boys wear plaid blouses with pleated skirts that did not have kilt styling. Note the plaids do not precisely match. We are not sure about the date. The late-1870s is possible, but we think the early-80s more likely.

It addition to kilt styling, there were other ways to the do the skirt portion of a kilt suit. Mothers could chose what looked obstensibly like ordinary skirts with no kilt styling. These were both pleated and plain. Here some might say that a pleated skirt was a kilt. We have no objection to calling it a kilt, although there were some other characteristics of a kilt. Kilts were pleated, but there were other features as well. Notice that the unpleated checked skirt on the previous page has no kilt characteristics like a front pannel. The boys here also wear skirts with no effort to add kilt feartures except pleating (figure 1). We are not quite sure why kilt suits were made with skirts rather than kilts. They may have been less expensive and required less material. They also would have been simpler for home sewers to make. Many American mothers may have not been aware that a kilt was more than a skirt or in other cases not see any particular importance to having an actual kilt garment, especially if was more expensive or require a lot of extra trouble in sewing. We believe that wether or not the the skirt had kilt styling, most mothers would have referred to it as a kilt. There is no way of knowing, but we believe that mother would have referred to the outfits here as kilt sduits. What we are not entiorely sure about is if ready-made kilt suits were more likely to produce kilt suits with skirts that had the kilt styling. The plain skirt likt suits may have been more likely to have been sewed at home.

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Created: 11:40 PM 1/22/2010
Last updated: 8:20 AM 9/1/2010