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American kilt suits: gender trends kilt suit exceptions
American Kilt Suits: Kilt Suit Gender Trends--Exceptions
Figure 1.--This cabinet card poertrait shows the four chilren of we are guessing a farm family. We think it is a farm family because the older boys are wearing long pants. At the time, knee pants had become standard for boys, especually in cities. In rural areas long pants were still very common. Campbellsport at the time had a population nof about 600 people, meaning mosr of the studio clirents were farm families. The children look to be about 7-15 years old. The portait was probably taken in the early-1890s. There is no information available except the studio informnation. The girl is wearing a basic Fauntleroy kilt suit which was highly unusual. While the children are not identified, we believe it is clar that she is a girl. There are several clues here. She is holding flowers whilethe boys are holding hats. She has long hair while the boys have close=cropped hair, inmcluding the youngest boy. And then the most obvious--she has earings. We have never seen boys wearing earings, even the yiunger boys still weariung dresses. The studio is Van Dezannder in Campbellsport, Wisconsin.
There of course was no law against girls wearing kilt suits. It was all up to mother and her fashion sence. Fathers would not have objected. Fathers may have intervened in how their sons were dressed, at least as they got older. It would have been rare for them to intervene in how their daugters were dressed. That was widely acceoted to be =mother's province. The fascinating asopect about kilt suits is that virtually every mother in America only dressed their boys in kilt suits, never their girls. We have acquired hundreds appraoaching a thousand kilt suit images and virtually everyone of them shows boys wearing the kilt suits. America is, however, a large country and for the most part the individuaals are not identified. We are thus left to assess the gender. We will load here any portraits that clearly show girls wearing kilt suits. There are very rare exceptions to the general rule which apprarently was very widely followed by American mothers. It is astonishing given the emense size of the phhotographic record that we see so very few exceptions. So far the imafe here is the only one w have foind (figure 1).
