United States Sailor Cap Styles: Commodore Caps


Figure 1.--These brothers wear identical sailor suits with commodore-style sailor cps. The sailor suit was very common at the time, but very few boys wore these commodore caps. The portrait was a new style cabinet card mount wgich was designed fifferently and slightly larger--5 1/4 by 7 1/4 inches. The boys were Alfred and Conniem but we do not have their last name. They look to be about 5-8 years old. The pooch was Bummer. The studio looks like H. Jaconsen, although it is difficult to reas in Canyon City, Orgon.

We see a few American boys wearing commodore-style sailor cap, at least I think this is what they wee called. Most catalogs just call them sailor caps. Unlike other sailor cap styles, this was a syle for officers, not ordinary enlisted sailors (ratings). Yaucht captins alkso woire them. They were not very common for boys. And we have so few examples, we are not sure just who was wearing them. One might think that it was relatively well to do families, but we ar not sure about it. One of the charms of the sailor suit was well-to-do childrn wearing the uniforms of ordinary sailors. This was just the concept of Prince Albert and Queen Victoria. We are not sure though this was the case. Families in tune with fashion undertood this. Mor noveau-rich families or a leat those just entering the middle-class may not have understood the fashion niceties and associate conventions. We do not see these caps in Britain.






HBC





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Created: 10:50 PM 6/22/2014
Last updated: 10:51 PM 6/22/2014