Figure 1.--The boy in this CDV portrait is Morbios (as best I can make out) Petor. He was from Helsingborg. He wears a striped tunic suit with a very small tunic jacket. The portrait is undated, but note the stand behind the boy. This means it was a fairly early portrait. We would guess that it was taken some time in the 1870s, even the late-1860s. The long knee pants would also help fate the portait p this period. A German reader writes, "Yes, this portrait is early, but the stand is not definitive proof that it was taken in the 1870s, I have seen stands even after the turn-of-the 20th century." We were not using the furniture styl to date the imsage, but rather the photogrphic studio trends.

We do not know much about tunics in the early-19th century in the wea before thevadvent nof photogrphy. One portrait from perhaps the 1870s shows a Swedish boy wearing a very short striped tunic jacket with matching long pants/long knee pants (figure 1). We have never seen a tunic suit quite like it. We are not sure how common such suits were in Sweden. We note that tunics were very common at the turn of the 20th century. The sailot tunic suit on the previou page is a good example of an early-20h century oitfit. It looks indestinguishable from those we have seen in manyh other European countries as well as the United States. . A reader writes, "The boy looks as if he is 9 or 10 years old to me. That seems rather old for a tunic suit. If my age estimate is correct then Swedish styles were very different (at least as far as tunic suits go) from England, France and America during the same time period." We might gues the boy was just a little bit younger, perhaos 8-9 years old. He does seem a little older than the American boys we hsve noted wearing tunics in the 1870s. And the style is quite a bit different. Notice how short the y=tunic jacket was. Swedish styles in the 19th century were heavily infkluenced by Germany. I have nit seen. however, a Germn tunic suit quite like this one.

Related Style Pages in the Boys' Historical Web Site
[Long pants suits] [Knicker suits] [Short pants suits] [Socks] [Eton suits] [Jacket and trousers] [Blazer]
[School sandals] [School smocks] [Sailor suits] [Pinafores] [Long stockings]

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Created: 2:08 AM 1/19/2008
Last updated: 9:10 PM 2/24/2026