United States Boys' Clothes: Mixed Skirted Garment Portraits
Figure 1.--Here we see two unidentified children, presumably siblings. We commonly see younger boys wearing kilk suts and girls wearing dresses. The boy on the left is wearing a collar-buttoning kilt suit with a wide white collar. The child on the right is almost ceratinly a girl with short hair. hSe wears a dress with a large lace collar. This id a combination we commonly see in the late-19th centurry. They look to be 4-8 yerars old. The portarit is uundated, but was probably taken in the 1880s. The studio was Jewell and Corkins in Milan, Michigan.
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Many portraits show a mix of garments, includung skirted garments. In the eraly 19th century we mostly see dresses without much variety. Boys also wore tunics, but they were much less commn. After mid-century we see a lot of portraits with the younger boys wearing kilt suits and the girls wering dreses. Skorts were less common, we think because mothers usully dressed the children up kn theor best outfits for a photographic portrait. This all varied with a mix of gender, chronology, and age. Here we are mostly talking about the 19th century. Boy swearing skirted garments rapidy declined after the turn of the 20th century. We do see tunics becoming a major boys's garment (1900s-10s). After that we rarely see American boys wearing skirted garments beyond infancy. We have found a few exceptions, but they are not very common at all. And at the same time we begin to see girls wearing pants, althought this was limited until afrer World War II, and at first only for outdoor play.
