Other Cold Weather Garments


Figure 1.--This Philadelphia boy in the late 1880s or l890s wears leather gloves. Also notice the leather leggings and leather sailor hat.

This page will be for all kinds of miscelaneous cold weather wear. HBC has not yet pursued this topic, but it is one project for futuire attention.

Ear Muffs

I'm not sure just when ear muffs first appeared. The turn of the 20th century seems likely, but that is just a guess. One advantage of a boy with longbhair or ringlets is that ear muffs were not as necessary as with a boy that had a short hair cut.

Gloves and Mittens

Another important item for winterwear is course protective garments for the hands. Boys wore both mittens and gloves. Modest income families families might buy wollen mittens for the children. We are not sure when mittens first appeared.Generally younger children also wore mittens. Sometimes they came with strings to keep children from using them. We have seen mittens in bright colors and patterns, but early images show more plain colors. While mittens were worn as specifically cold weather wear, gloves could be worn all year round. Generally speaking wealthy people wore leather gloves. Gloves were in part cold weather garments, but in the 19th and early 20 centuries they were essential dresswear regardless of the wearher. This was less true for children, but one sees children in formal portraits wearing gloves. White gloves were worn for some special occassions such as First Communion.

Muffs

One HBC contributor inquires if boys who wore long curls and hair bows with dresses include girlish muffs? HBC is unsure. Ceratinly boys after breeching would not have worn muffs, but I have never read about what the convention was before breeching. It seems likely, however, that if the boy has not yet been breeched that a boy might have had a muffler, this is especially true as muff were widely worn by men and women in the 17th century and old gradually became seen as a woman's item as the 19th century progressed.

Scarves and Mufflers

Scarves are worn for various purposes. Mufflers are heavy neck scarves.






HBC






Navigate related Boys' Historical Clothing Web Site cold weather pages pages:
[Return to the Main cold weather page]
[Coats] [Knits] [Leggings] [Sweaters] [Other cold weather wear] [Winter underwear]



Navigate the Boys' Historical Clothing Web Site:
[Introduction] [Activities] [Biographies] [Chronology] [Cloth and textiles] [Clothing styles] [Countries] [Topics]
[Bibliographies] [Contributions] [FAQs] [Glossaries] [Images] [Satellite sites] [Tools]
[Boys' Clothing Home]




Created: December 20, 1999
Last updated: 2:37 AM 2/20/2005