Figure 1.--Here we see an unidentified Amerrican school portrait, probably taken about 1910, we think 1st graders. Some of the boys are wearing tunic suits. This is a little difficult to tell because the boys in front are sitting down. And the tops of tunic suits look like popular blouse styles. Here we see more tunic looking outfits than we see in most schools.

While American boys did not commonly wear kilts, pinafores, and smocks-- tunics were a garment that was widely worn. Unfortunately, the photographic record does not cover the early-19th century when we think boys did wear tunics to school, at least city boys. Of course in the early-19th century, America was a largely rural country and people outside the cities commonly did not dress fashionably. Tunics would have been seen as fashionable. The popularity of tunics varied over time. And we do see quite a number of boys wearing tunics in the early-20th century. This was mostly younger boys after the mid-19th century, but the age range included the younger primary years. Even so we do not see many American boys in the photographic record wearing tunics to school. We see many American boys wearing tunics in the photographic record, only we do not see many at school. We do have a large collection of American school photogaphics, both chronological and individual school images. And we see almost no boys wearing tunics, in sharp contast to the porttaits we have found in photographic record. Herec we have a school where we see some boys wearing what look like tunic suits (figure 1). We have, however, found few images like this.

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Created: 11:56 PM 4/12/2023
Last updated: 11:56 PM 4/12/2023