Figure 1.--Here we see an indated cabinet card portrait, probably taken about 1910. It shows the collar bows had not not yet disapeared, but were smaller and being worn by younger boys. The boy looks to be about 4-years old. The studio was Rothschild in Chicago.

While there were a variety of bow types, the dominant and most obvious type and easy to follow was the collar bow. They really stand out as a feature of boys' clothing, although for a relatively short time period. This is fair well established in the photographic record because it occurred at a time that photography had become a well developed industry. Not only had it reached a price point that most Americans could afford, but the earnings of American workers were rising. The result is an enormous photographic record, the largest of any country. And it was almost entirely studio photography for which parents dressed up in their best outfits and of course spruced up their children adding decorative touches for the event. Photography was not invented in America, but no country took to it to a greater extent than America. The popularity of both photography and bows occurred not only at a time that America was experiencing enormous industrial expansion, but when families with modest origins were sharing in the country's prosperity. This included immigrant families flooding into the country to pursue the American dream. Interestingly, modern historiography influenced by the woke agenda tends to focus on the difficulties immigrant faced. They were real, but in reality not only did immigrants flock to America, but the vast majority experienced substantial improvements in their life experiences. Relatively few returned to Europe. And like native-born Americans, they wanted to show off their new success. Clothing, including children's clothing, was one way of doing that. And the decorative touches after the mid-19th century outpaced anything in Europe. American mothers subjected their boys to a veritable sartorial arms race focused on their boys that make American boys stand out in the photographic record of the late-19th and early-20th century. And the bow was a very important part of this. Collar bows were flamboyant and a relatively inexpensive way of doing that. There were other types of bows, but the collar bow really stands out. The principal appearance of all these bow types seems roughly the same chronological period -- the late- 19th and very early-20th centuries. Bows can be observed outside this time period, but not nearly as common. Hair bows may have been a little different, but this is difficult to assess as we have such limited information from the early-19th century. An exception was the sleeve bow, a 20th centuryb inovation for Catholic boys doing their First Communion. There were both gender and age conventions, but boys did wear the various types of decorative bows. We note the bows becoming more modest after the turn-of-the 20th century. A good example of the declining bow sizes after the turn-of-the 20th century is Roy Swanson

Created: 9:00 PM 10/6/2008
Last updated: 5:04 PM 4/18/2023