Figure 1.--This tin-type portrait shows an American boy wearing a light-colored tunic suit. The studio has tinted the boy's bow blue. The studio uses a fringed chair, very popular at the time. This boy did not have a his tunic, but a defined waistline was sewn into the tunic. As with most tin-types, the boy is unidentified. He looks to be about 4 years old. Notice that he is wearing a long-sleeved shirt with a small ruffeled collar.

Tunic suits mostly came with a belt or other waistline device to create a defined waisline. We are not entirely sure why this was. We think the belt and other waistline feature was seen as military feature. We note both large leather belts as well as modest cloth devices which emulated a belt. This included both actual cloth belts as well as features sewn into the tunic that meerly emulated a waistline belt. The cloth beklts seem much more common than the leather belts. Either was the beklts served no practical purpose such as holding up trousers. They may have been used to cinch the tunic tighter at the waist, but this only affected what the tunic looked like when the boy wore it. Some if the cloth belts could not even do this. We have seen European tunics that did not have belts or other waistline features. We do not see American bots in the 1870s wearing tunics without defined waistlines which were created by either belts or cloth features sewn into the tunic.

Created: 5:16 AM 3/5/2010
Last edited: 4:33 AM 7/16/2016