Figure 1.--This CDV shows an unidentified boy wearing a dark tunic suit with long pants. He has a white collar, perhaps an Eton collar with a bow. The studio is unidentified, but we think the boy is English. He kooks to be about 9 years old. There is an unusal buckle to the belt. He holds a flat-top hat, we think a straw ht.

Tunic suits consisted of the tunic and pants. By the 1860s they were mostly matching garments. We call these garments tunics, but most of what we see in the 1860s button up the front and might be called long jackets. Here we see a good example, another unidentified English boy from the 1860s (figure 1). It is a long tunic, falling to between the knees and the waist. It is worn with below the knees knee-pants. Early tunics seem to have been more like smocks. Portraits during the first haff of the 19th century show boys wearing tunics with long trousers. We note shortened-length pants (knee pants and bloomer knickers) for the first time in substantial numbers during the 1860s. Of course the 1860s is the first decade in which we see shortened-length pants with tunics. Unfortumnately we do not yet have many images from the 1850s. An example is the younger brother in an unidentified family portrait of three boys. Most of the tunics were belted, but we see some unbelted ones.

Created: 11:04 AM 5/21/2018
Last updated: 11:04 AM 5/21/2018