Figure 1.--This American family appers to be having a beach holiday. The tuntype portrit looks to gave been taken in the 1900s decade, but there is no studio information. The girl wears a print dress with a huge white collar, almost a top. She also has a sailor cap and ringlet curls. This is a little unusual as the cap covers up much of her hair. Apparently the cao was seen appropriate for the beach.

Caps were more for boys than girls. Many caps were based on military styles. The cap was seen as primarily a boys item. Boys wore both hats and caps in the 19th century, but girls wore mostly hats and tams/berets. Caps were much less common for girls wear. A rare cap worn by girls was sailor caps. Sailor hats were more common for girls but we see some girls wearing sailor caps in both the late-19th and early-20th century. The girl's cap here is a good exmple (figure 1). We see a few girls wearing other caps, but usually as a kind od sporty style. A good example is a Boston girl wearing a peaked cap with a flouncy crown in the 1890s. Notice how iut matches her dress. For formal occasions she would have worn a hat. The prevalence of hats with girls continued in th 20th century, although after mid-century girls no longer commonly wore headwear in general, including hats. We see some girls wearing baseball caps in the late-20th century. One style of caps worn by both boys and girls in both the 19th and 20th century were stocking caps. Often girls worn fancier stocking caps or caps of a different color, but they were the same basic cap. Actually stocking caps are not true caps, but we include them here because they are so commonly called caps.

Created: 4:21 AM 11/27/2017
Last updated: 8:52 AM 10/22/2018