Figure 1.--. |
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We are not sure when Austrian boys began wearing sailor suits. Austri is a very snll vountry, lthough it had a huge empire in Central and Eastern Europe. As a result, the phoyigrohic record is linited compared o the other Europeab powers. Austrian photographic images from the 1840s and 50s are rare and we have a realtively small archive. What the royal family did strongly influenced fashion in Prussia and than Germany invluding Austria. As best can tell POrince Rudolf (1858-89) dud not wear sailor suits. It was an English fashion. We suspect that it was Prince Wilhelm in Prussdias that was the first boy in the German speaking workd to wear a sailor suit (1863). At least the first boy in a position to set the fashion. We noy=tice Austrian nobility wearing sailor sduits, but the inluence may have been foreign wives. While we do not yet have details as to just ewhen the sailor duit becsme importnt, ewe do know thst by the end iof the century it was one of the most populsr dtyle for Austrain boys uth the fmilisar stripe detailing. .
We have not yet found any evidence of Austrian boys wearing sailor suits in the 1850s. This is not to say that sailor suits did not exist. Our Austrin archive is limited. But at this time the style was still percolating in Britain and Amnerica.
HBC knows little about the history of the sailor suit in Austria. No information on the chronology of Austrian sailor suits available yet as we have relatively few Austrian images. The Austro-Hungarian Empire had a small navy based in Italian ports. The Empire controlled Venice and areas of northern Italy. The popularity of the sailor suit may have come more from the German fashion influence than the emulation of the Austrian Navy. We have found numerous portraits of Crown Prince Rudolf (b. 1858). And as far as we can tell, he did not wear sailor suits. He wore army uniforms, but we do not see any sailor suits. What seenms to have lunched the sailor suit dtule in Austri was the marriage of the Prussian Crown Prince Frederick to a British princess, the Princess Royal Victoria. Her parents had dressed the English princes in sailor suits. She thus helped introduce the sailor suit to Germany. Both Prince Wilhelm and Prince Henry wore sailor suits as boys in the 1860s. Prince Henry even persued a career in the Krirgsmarine. We are not sure if Austrian royalty began dressing boys in sailor suits during the 1860s.
We hve not yet foiund evidence of Austrian boys wearing sailor suits in the 187os. We suspect that the style had been introiduced and failure to find examples is due to our small Austrian archive.
The earliest Austrian image we have comes from the 1880s. The unidentified CDV portrait here is undated, but we believe it was taken in the 1880s (figure 1). Note that is a very plain suit with none of the familiar stripe detailing. You even have to look closely to identify it as a sailor suit. The boyv is wearing his sailor suit with a non-uniform hat. Here note the feather which was also commonly worn with Alpine caps and lederhosen. I think the hat and the feather as well as the pose by a fence is to give the image a country look. This seems a bit strange as the boy is dressed in a sailor suit--hardly a farm look. We believe that sailor suits were worn earlier in Austria, but we just have so few Austrian images that we do not have any earlier example.
Germany in the 1890s began building a highseas fleet creating a naval frenzy. The naval frenzy may have affected Austria as well. We know that Austruia built a few dreafnoughts (big-gun battleships). And by the 1890s the photogrsphic record shows substantial number of Austrian boys wearing sailor suits. It was clearly a popular style.
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