Figure 1.--This American boy, Robert Hode, wears a hair bow with short ringlets, cut well above his shoulders. Click on the image for information on his impressive lace collar and Russian blouse suit. Image courtesy of the RG collection.

Hair bows were worn with several different hair styles. This varied somewhat by country. American boys often, but not always wore their hair bows with ringlet curls. Frebnch boys appear t have worn them with long uncurled hair, the bow being used to keep the hair in place. While longer hair styles were more common with hair bows, not all were worn with long shoulder length hair. They were almosy always worn with hair os at least over-the-ears styles. Hair bows were most common with shoulder-length hair, but they were worn with shorter length styles as well. The following hair styles were worn with hairbows. HBC is not sure at this time just which hair styles were worn with hair bows, but will add hair styles as information becomes available. They only appear to have been worn with longer hair styles.

Straight Hair

French boys often wore long uncurled hair. The style often has a rather wild unkept look. This was less common in America, although we note some portraits with American boys wearing hairbow without ringlets. Most of the American impages without ringles were taken before 1885-86 when Little Lord Fauntlroy was published. These images are a small percentag of the available images. Some reports suggest that hair bows in France were commonly used to hold the uncured hair in place. HBC suspects, however, that the primary purpose was decorative. We believe the long ringlets were more common after the turn of the 20th century in Europe although the limited numbers of available imagesmake it difficult to confirm this.

Long Ringlets

Most American boys wearing hair bows wore them with long, shoulder length ringlets. This appears to have been the most common hair style with which hair bows were worn, at least in America. This is difficult to assess. We are using the prevalence of these images in the photographic record as our prmariy indicator. Wjhile the chronological prevalence may be affected by the greater number of images available by the 1880s, the relative prevalence within any time period should be an acurate reflction. We are less sure about Europe for which we have far fewer images. Hairbows appear to have been worn with all the differet ringlet curl styles. We believe the long ringlets were most common in the late 19th century, especially after the publicaion of Little Lord Fauntleroy before the turn of the 20th century. We still see images in the 1900s before World War I.

Short Ringlets

After the turn of the 20th century, ringlets curls for boys became less common. Some boys who did wear ringlets wore a shorter style above the shoulders. This shorter style was rarely seen in the 1880s and 90s when long thick ringlets were greatly prised--at least by doting mothers. Some boys wore these short ringlets with hair bows, but they were not as common as the longer ringlet style.

Curls

Many of the American boys that we have noted with hairbows appear to have worn them with ringlets. This was not the case in France and many other countries. Even in America we have noted boys wearing hairbows with hair that was curled, but not done in ringlets. It is sometimes not possible to tell if the child in question has hair that has been curled or is simply naturally curly. We have noted the boys' hair in differnt lrngths from blow the shiolders to ober the ears. While this was not the most common option in America, many of our images are American--primarily because HBC has aceess to more old American photographs.

Pig Tails

One style that was not common and therefore hair bows were not commonly seen was pig tails. HBC has noted one boy whose mother did do his hair in pig tails with what look like velvet hair bows in a dark color.

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Created: May 13, 2000
Last updated: November 16, 2002