Figure 1.--Here we have two CDV portraits of French boys wearing dresses. They are each identified on the back and dated 1887. Most likely brothers as the same background props are being used. We believe that the hvery carefully done hand tinting on the dresses probbly reflects the approximate color of the dresses that the boys wore. The photo and studio are on the front of the card, but I can't make it out.

We are unsure at this time about the colors of the dresses worn by French boys. The problem we have of course is that HBC relies very heavily on period photography for our assessment. And photography in the 19th and early 20th century only provides us black and white images. We have been able to obtain little information from catalogs and painted portraits. These would be the two best sources. Another good source of color information is vintage clothing, but vintage clothing is only useful if it can cnnected with a specific individual. Without this information we have no way of knowing if dress was worn by a girl or boy. We have some color information from colorized commercial portraits, but we consider these to be highly unreliable. One source we believe to be relatively reliable is colorized portrits. We think that the photographer would have made some effort to acurately depict the colors of the dresses and other clothes. We are insure, however, just how this was done. The tinted 1887 portraits here shows boys wearing blue and purple dresses (figure 1).

Created: 10:56 PM 12/12/2005
Last updated: 10:56 PM 12/12/2005