Figure 1.--This cabinet card portrait shows twins Claude and Clyde Luce. They look to be anout 3 years old. The boys are dressed in identical skirt suits which were probanly valled like suits at the time. Notice mother has chosen plaid material for the vest and skirt. Other thn the plaid material, the boys' skirts have no kilt features. The mother almost certainly would have described the outfits as kilt suits. The card does not indicate the studio. We have, however, a CDV baby portrait of the boys. Click on the image to see the baby portrait. And it was taken at the A. Barnes Studio in Hillsdale, Michigan. The CDV/cabinet card mix helps fate the image. This and aspects of the outfit help date it. We would guess that it was taken in th late-1860s or early-70s. This was just the time fram tht kilt suits were becoming popular.

This is a tricky category because skirt-like suits look so much like kilt suits. And it is a distinction that was not made at the time. Kilt suits were not an exclusive American style, but more widely worn in America than any other country, including Scotland and England. But American mothers had no idea what a kilt was. For the most part, American mothers saw a kilt as simply a skirt worn by boys. Many but not all mothers saw it as a plaid skirt. Scottish and English mothers did know what a kilt was, but not American mothers. As a result you see many American boys weraring what were more skirt rather than kilt suits. The skirts might be plaid, but had no other kilt fearures. we see these skirt suits with no kilt features most commonly in the 1860s and early-70s when the kilt suit fashion was just beginning to become established and Amercan mothers still knew very little about kilts. As far as we know, these garments were clled kilt suits whether or not the skirted bottom had any kilt features. We see these as more correctly be called skirt suits. The conventions were not different, but as a purely fashion matter we think worth noteing.

Created: 2:40 PM 3/31/2017
Last updated: 3:44 PM 3/31/2017