Figure 1.-- Here we see a young mother and her three children. They look to be about 5-10 years old. The portait is undated, but mothers's dress and whicker furniturehelp us to date the portrait at about 1895-1900.. The boys wear standard double-breasted suits. The high set lapels are hidden by the collars and bows. The collars and bows are modest by 1890s standards. The studio was Griffin in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

The accompnying garments worn with double-breasted jckets depoending on the populas fashions of the day and age apropirateness. Doble breasted jackets became popular in the late-19th century. During the Fauntleroy Craze (1885-1905), we see Fauntleroy items like large collars and floppy bows being added to the younger boys wearing these suits. The youngest boys might wear Fauntleroy ruffled collars and even matching wrist cuffs. The younger boy on the previous page is a good example. Sonmewhat older boys might wear large collars without the ruffles and smaller bows as we see here (figure 1). . Teenagers might wear detchable collars of varying styles and neckties or bow ties. The suit itself was fairly standard for a wide range of boys abd teens. Knee pants were fairly sradard, but by about age 15 years we begin tio see more boys wearing long psnts. After this we see smaller bows and eventully neckties being worn, especilly by the older boys. We see a range of collars being worn with these suits, basically following a shift from detchable to soft collars. After the turn of the 20th century, especially ny the 1910s we begfin seeing mostly neckties or bow ties abd by the 1920s, mostly soft-collared shirts with attached collars.

Created: 11:21 PM 1/6/2023
Last updated: 11:21 PM 1/6/2023