Figure 1.--This cabinet card portrait shows an unidentified boy with ringlet curls and a floppy bow and patterened blouse. The photographer was Kiefer in Portsmouth, O(hio). It is undated, but we would guess it was taken in the 1880s. The boy looks to be anout 5 years old.

We are not yet sure about the different types of patterns, but there was quite a range. We notice polka-dots meaning fill-in circles of various sizes. Other geomeric shapes were used, including diamonds and triangles. There may have been other patterns besides these basic geomeric shapes. There were many other patterns, including much more complicated patterns. Stripes were also used, but this may have been a 20th century style. We have not yet found 19th century examples of striped blouses. We hope to be able to better this and other quesions concerning patterns as we load more blouse images. We have also noted plaid blouses.

Geometric Shapes

Geomertric shapes were one of the most popular pattern. By far the most important were poladots. We notice polka-dots meaning fill-in circles. They were done in many various sizes. We also notice poladots beeing used on bows. Other geomeric shapes were used, including diamonds and triangles. There may have been other patterns besides these basic geomeric shapes, but polkadots were the most important. Most of these geomertric shap patterns were done on white shirts. But we also see them done with colored shirts. Plain shirts were the nost commn, but we see quite a number of polkadot shirts. We are not yet sure about te cronology of polkadot blouses. We think it was a style mostly worn during the 1880s-1900s, but this needs to be confirmed. We are not sure about the gender conventions.

Other Prints

There were many other patterns, including prints in much more complicated patterns. We do not yey have an inventory of the different print patterns used, but from what we have observed so far, there were quite a number of them. . This is a little difficult to make out unless we have a close up portrait. The boy here has a blouse that looks like a six-pointed star (figure 1).

Stripes

Stripes were also used for boys' blouses. The photographic record suggests that striped blouses were not nearly as common as plain blouses, but not rare either. Here there may have been an age factor. We tend to note the older boys wearing more of the striped blouses. We note stripes done in a number of ways. We note single and multiple stripes as well as stripes done in various widths. We do not yet have any idea about the colors used in these stripes. Here the black-and-white photography of the day make it very difficult to assess color. Nor so we have a good idea about the chronology of striped blouses. We see striped blouses in the mid-19th century, but they then do noit become popular again until the 1890s. We also see them in the early-20th century. Blouses after that were most done as single color garments without patterns. We hope to be able to better assess the striped patterns and the chronology of striping as we acquire more images for our chronology. We do not know to what extent stripes were used in girls' blouses.

Plaid

We have also noted plaid blouses in America. They do not seem to have been particularly common, but we have noted a few. They were almost always done as dark blouses. We are not sure what colors were usually worn. One might think that they would be worn with kilts or kiltsuit, but this does not seem to hasve been the case. We think that they were mostly worn wihout any kind of suit jackets. This often seems to be the case with pattern blouses, but seems to have been especially true of plaid blouses. They were often worn woith plain-colored bows. We do not know if they were worn by boys in otyher countries. We also dfonnot know if there wre gender conventions. We have not yet noted girlsing them.

Created: 11:09 PM 2/13/2008
Last updated: 2:14 AM 8/17/2010