Figure 1.--TYhis CDV has no accopanying information. It looks to us like it was taken in the 1870s. We can;'t see collar of the dress the boy iu wearing. Mother has added a large lace collar. There is a high neckline. We can see the bodice, sleeves, waistine, and skirt. It is ipossible ton tell for sure, but this boy seems to be wearing pants with his dress.

a dress has several different contruction elements. The major elements are the neckline, collar, sleeves, yoke, bodice, waistline, and skirt. The style of these various elements might be adopted for gender differences, although boys also wore the same dress elements as their sisters, although colors and decoration might be different, especially after the mid-19th century. This caried from family to family and chronologically. m We will attempt to assess the various construction elements to determine gender-based differences if any. The problem for HBC is that we just do not know very much about dress styles. We will work on styles that occur to us, but if HBC readers who are more acquainted with dress styles have any suggestions here, we would appreciate your insights. Hopefully as we archive more images we can develop more information on gender differences. Another issue is that most of the available photographs do not identify the child, so we often are not sure if the child is a boy or girl. And gender identification is especially difficult for younger children. Of course that is less important for this section where we are focusing on construction elements.

Created: 9:34 PM 9/25/2022
Last updated: 9:34 PM 9/25/2022