Figure 1.--This Ambrotyoe portrait shows an unidentified American boy wears a cut-away jacket with heavy piping. There are two connecting tabs, rather unusual. Notice the wide sleeves and blouse sleeve cuffs. This was caracteristic of 1850s cut-away jackets. The jacket was worn with different colored long pants.

There are several elements in the construction of the cut away jacket. The most important are the collar, sleeves, degree of the cut opening the front, and the connection joining the two sides. As our archive is still fairly limited, we have only begun to collect information on these elements. And this proces is complicated by the fact that we are unabke to destinguish 1840s and 50s Dags. As best we can tell these early sut-awy jackets did not have collars. Shirt collars and bows make itg difficult to tell for sure, but this seems to be the case. We note severl images showing these jackets with very wide sleeves. We do not think that all these jackets had these wide sleeves, but mny fid an the style is notably less popular by the 1860s. The other major element with these jackets is the degree to which the two sides of the jacket are cut away fom the adjoiing top point ti the bottom. These tend to be short jckets, but we do not yet have eoough images to make any asessment on length. Another interesting feature is the top connection. We note both connecting fabric pieces and chains. This is also difficult to assess because of collars and bows. The image on the previous page shows how the top elements were often covered up.

Created: 5:23 AM 6/1/2014
Last updated: 1:29 AM 4/28/2023