Tricycles: Clothing Styles


Figure 1.--This American boy was photographed in the 1890s wearing a stripped sailor suit and long sockings. He looks to be about 5 or 6 years of age. He has short hair, looking rather like Eddie Munster. This is not a hair style HBC has commonly noted. I assume that the tricycle is the boy's prized possession and not a studio prop.

HBC has noted boys on trikes wearing a wide variety of clothes. HBC has not noted boys in dresses riding trikes, but numerous photographs shows boys in kilt suits and Fauntleroy kilts and suits riding trikes. Short hair cuts are the most common, but some of these boys also have ringlet curls in America and long uncurled hair in France. A wide variety of other styles have been noted such as Fauntleroy suits, tunics, and sailor suits. Given the popularity of sailor suits, we are somewhat suprised that boys wearing sailor suits are not more common in the early portraits. Boys mostly wear knee pants, knickers, rompers, and short pants with trikes. Almost all boys wear dark long stockings in early portraits with trikes. Boys rarely wore long pants with trikes, although boys by the 1940s might wear long pants styles like coveralls with trikes.








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Created: March 31, 2002
Last updated: March 31, 2002