Figure 1.--Here we see two siblings. The portrait is undated, but we would guess was taken in the late-1890s. The younger child wears a jacketed dress, a popular 1880s style. The portrait was taken by the McManus Brothers in Traverse City, Michigan. Unfortunately the children are not identified. Thus we are not sure if the younger child is a boy or girl. The short hair suggess a boy. But short hair was styling for younger girls at the time, but usually not quite this short. The center part does suggest a girl, but is not definitive.

We notice a variety of different dress types. Here we are not as well versed as with boys' clothing types. Hopefully HBC readers with a better knowledge of dresses will assist us. There are quite a range of dress styles including A-line, Empire, jacketed, pinafore, sailor, and many other types. Here we hope to add more different dress types as we learn more about the subject. Some were more popular for boys than others, but this was in part a factor associated with the chronological popularity of the different styles. While we generally see boys wearing plainer styles than girls, we note many portraits of boys wearing fancy dresses as well. And of course we have the persistent problem resulting from the fact that most old photographs do not idebntify the individuals. Sometimes we can figure out who is who, but often not with complete certainty.

A-line

We notice various definitions of A-line dresses. Essentially they are dresses shaped like the capital letter A. The boddive is commonly form fitting. There often was a fegibed waistline. At the waistline, however, the skirt begins to flare out. The flare varoed from dress to dress. Some flared slightly, gradually widening as you move down toward the hem. Some A-line dresses flared out significantly.

Empire

This was a popular style in the earl-19th century. They were called Empire dresses because they became popular in Napoleonic France. They were vaguely based on classical styles. An empire dress had a raised waist line is raised above the wearers natural waistline. Some empire dresses had waistlines just below the bust. Little boys in the early-19th century wore them along with girls and women. They were commonly done in white, often with a colored sash. We believe that the dresses were more common for European children than still largely rural America, but a few boys in fashionable American cities may have worn them.

Kilt Suit Look

Kilt and skirt suits pants were two piece outfits with the jackets. In some cases they were three piece suits with vests which were common. We see some outdits that look like kilt suits, but were actully dresses. It is a little difficult to tell, but we see outfirs that look like these suits, but were actually one-piece dresses. This is somewhat complicated by the fact that a popular dresses style for girls was jacketed dresses--dresses done with separate, but matching jackets. We can see kilt suit drsses that that look as if there is a jacket, vest, and skirt/kilt, but these were just stylistic features and not really actual kilt suit garments. We see these kilt suit dressess commonly in the 1870s and 80s. While dressess we think that tgat they were mostly worn by boys, we think some girls may have worn them, but not nearly as commonly as boys. This is something we are looking into. We are not sure about the age conventions. It may have been the same as for actual kilt suits, but we are not yet sure about this. They tended to be fussy stles with a combination of buttons, pleats jacketed styling and other featurs. Some were obviously drsses. Others you have to look more closely to tell that they were not kilt suits. Many had low waistlines. A goof example is the dress worn by Maurice Frost about 1880.

Jacketed

Some dresses were made with matching jackets. We see women and girls wearing this style. It was quite stylish for quite a time, It was also worn by boys who have not yet been breeched. It was not nearly as popular for boys as kilt suits, but we do see some boys wearing these dresses. It is a style similar in some extent to kilt suits. Both had jackets which usually matched the skirted part of the outfit. The essential difference here was what was under the jacket. If the child was wearing a dress undernath, meaning a garment with a connected top and skirted bottom then we have a jacketed dress. If the child wears a blouse with or without a vest and kilt/skirt underneath, then he is wearing a kilt suit or skirt. The vests that were often worn with kikt suits sometimes made it difficult to determine just what the child was wearing.

Pinafore

Children might wear pinafores to protect their dresses. This was very common in the 19th and early-20th century. Pinafores were mostly for girls, but yonger boys might also wear them. We have found quite a few examples in England, but few in America. We have noted dresses were also made with pinafore styling added and were of course called pinafore dresses. We note them in the mid-20th century after pkinafores themselves have gone out of style. We are not sure though just when they first appeared. These were most popular for girls, but some younger boys also wore them..

Sailor

Sailor styled dresses appear to have been very popular for children. They were not exclusively worn by boys. We also notice girls wearing sailor dresses. We have noted portraits of English boys wearing sailor dresses. There were a widecrange if styles, both traditional and non-traditional. Our assessment is preliminary, butvthetraditiinslly styled sailor dresses seem more populsr for the girls than the boys. Some sailor dresses look rather like middly blouses worn with skirts/kilts. These might be called kilt suits. Other slirted outfirs are clearly one-piece dresses. Here it is not always easy to tell the difference. We notice boys wearing these dresses in the 19th century. We are not sure when they first appeared. We do not even know if the first sailor dress were worn by boys or girls. Some were styled traditionally, but there were other sailor-inspired dresses. Sailor dresses for boys seem popular in the 1890s, but declined sharply in the 1900s. They continued popular with girls for some time. They were a very populr style for American girls as well. They were particularly popular for girls in the early-20th century, but the style has never really disappeared.

Suit Dresses

We are not entirely sure what to call these dresses, but they have details that look rather like boy's suits. The bodies are styled like suit jackets. This we are going to call the suit dresses. We welcome readers who know more about dresses to provide us more information on these drssses. Notably, we do not see girls wearing them. As far as we can tell, they seem to be a boys' dress style. They are different than kilt suits in that suit dresses are one piece garments. We notice these dresses in the late 19th century when Norfolk suits were popular. Thus we see these dresses commonly made with Norfolk detailing. The basic dresses were often made on a A-line basis although some are almost tubular with little flaring of the skirt. They commonly had self belts.

Tube Dresses

We see dome dresses that seem like tues without reflecting notable body contours, but simply cut stright down. The the size of the chest, waist and legs are all about the same dimensions--giving theappearance of a tube. We are not sure what this style was called at the time, tube is our term. We will change it if we discover what the style was called by contemporary sources. We do not know about the chronology, but note some examples in the 1880s. These dresses were in a variey of styles and detailing. Some were done with double-breasted styling. We have not yet archived sufiencr examples to know how common this was. We see some done with collars. We are not sure about the gender connotations. We think girls also wore these desses, but this needs to be confirmed.

Unknown Type

We have found dresses that we are not sure how to classify the dress type. This is in part because our understanding of dress styles is very basic. And 19th century dresses could be very fussy making it rather complicated to determine a specific dress styles. Many do not seem to be clear cut examples of any one single dress type. Some of the dresses seem to mix various dress styles or stylistic ideas. Hopefully HBC readers will have some ideas on how to classify the dresses here.