Other Boys' Collars


Figure 1.--The small sice of the collar suggests that thiss Massachusetts boy was probably photographed in the 1870s. He wears a polkadot collar trimmed in lace or other fancy white material. Note that he wears it with a jacket that has a collar itself. Often these jackers were worn without a blouse collar or only a small one. Also note that he does not wear a floppy bow. Such bows were becoming very popular.

Besides these major types of collars worn by boys, there were many other styles that never proved very popular, in many cases understandably so. Mothers and fashion designers could be quite inovative with clooars. You probably have never heard of a polkadot collar, but some poor boys wore them. In most cases HBC knows very little about these collars, but some information can be deduced from the available photographic images.

Polkadot Collars

Beginning about 1870 one begins to see polkadots at boys' collars. Usually it was polkadots on the bows worn by boys--usually with white collars. Some mothers, however conceived of the idea of putting the dots directly on the collar. The idea never caught on. The American boy here wears an example of a poladot collar (figure 1). I'm not sure how to describe the collar. Note that he wears it with a jacket that has a collar itself. Often these jackers were worn without a blouse collar or only a small one.

Unknown Collar

Here we see an American boy wearing an unusual collar. From the front it looks like a small Eton collar, but the collar seems ro widen at the back, almost as if there was a back flap. We are unsure, however, how it looked at the back. Not do we know what this type of collar would have been called.






HBC




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Created: December 17, 1999
Last updated: 6:10 PM 1/14/2006