Figure 1.--This CDV portrait comes from Linesville, Pennsylvania. It is located in northwestern Pennyvnia near the Ohio line. The unidentified boy wears a cross ribbon tie. Some sources describes it as a string tie. Note the narrow ribbon. There were also actual string ties. We see a few floppy bows at the end of the decade, but they were not yet very common.

The Industrial Revolution had kicked in (by the 1870s) and was reshaping American society. Mass production of cloth and ready made clothing propelled by the Civil War (1861-65) reached substantial levels in the 1870s. This meant not only that ready-made clothing was much more available and more importantly affordable (1870s). This mean that people including working-class people were able to dress better than ever before. But we do not yet see the very super-fancy outfits that would come in the 1880s. We begin to see fancy outfits in France by the late 1870s, but this was yet to impact American boys wear which were strongly influence by British fashion. This means that that children were being dressed notably better than ever before. And this included decorative touches like neck wear. We see different styles of neck wear, including bow ties, black string tie, ribbon, ties. We see more boys wearing bows in the 1870s than in the 60s. The bows that we see are increasing in size, but are still relatively small compared to what we are going to see at the end of the decade. And the cut-away jackets of the 60s became less common. We also notice mostly small bows in the 1870s which gradually grew larger as did collars. The trend of growing collars and bows was especially notable by the lae-1870s and early 80s. We are not entirely sure why these changes occurred. It may have been a European fashion influence, but we are not entirely sure about this. The bows tended to be rather subdued in the 1870s. A good example is the outfit worn by John Faulkes during the 1870s. John does not have a collar at all and his bow is very small, basically tiny. This was still very common in the 1870s. We note Gordon Bently wearing a simple flat bow (1879). The bright patterns were much more common in the 1880s and especially the 1890s. A good example is an unidentified Salem boy. Floppy bows were often worn with kilt suits. The kilt suit was a major style for younger boys. We don't see boys wearing floppy bows with dresses, presumably because girls also did not commonly wear them. The kilt suit was a different matter. We see many boys wearing floppy bows with the popular kilt suit, both with cutaway and other jackets and with blouses. Knee pants were just becoming universal for boys so we see some boys wearing floppy bows with long pants suits. It is not always possible to tell the difference between the 1870s and 80s, but the size of collars and bows is a good indicator, they tended to be much smaller in the 70s.

Created: 4:08 AM 9/25/2025
Last updated: 4:08 AM 9/25/2025