Figure 1.--This American boy had long ringlet curls which he wore with a tunic suit. The image is undated, but HBC would guess it was taken in the 1900s. Image courtesy of the RG collection. |
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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 publication of Little Lord Funtleroy (1895). A good example is an American boy George Dewey Howell, probably in the 1890s. Hair boes become much less common for boys after the turn of the century. We still see images of boys with ringlets and hair bows in the 1900s before World War I. An examole is an unidentified boy in the early-1900s. At the same time they became virtually standard for girls.
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