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Our initial assessment is that hats were more common with kilt suits than caps. This presumably reflects the fact that hats were more common than caps throughout the 19th century. We do, however, see quite a number of boys wearing caps and they were wearing several different style. We expected to find mostly Scottish style caps, the balmorals and glengaries, but find that other styles as well as hats were more common. In fact, the most notable aspect of caps was the diversity if cap styles worn. And we see several styles that we were somewhat surprised to find boys wearing with kilt suits. Jockey caps seems a little jrrig to be worn with kilt suits, but of course 19th century mothers had other fashion ideas than what may seem suitable to our modern eyes. We are still working on the relative popularity of the different styles. There des not seemto be any one type of cap or small numberof caps associated with kilt suits. The styles worn seem to be the same as those worn buy older boys that had been breeched.
We see some boys in kilt suits wearing peaked caps with very pronounced caps. These were different that the peaked school caps that were popular in Britain. I'm not sure just what they were called in the late-19th century. They look to us rather like a jockey cap. Some had pronounced bands, unlike school caps. And some had crowns done in sections, rather like school caps. The colors might be made to match the kilt suit. This was not a particularly common style, but we do see them being worn in the 1890s. We are not sure about others outfits with which they were worn.
We see militrary-styled peaked caps in the 19th-century. There is a vague resemblence to Oliver Twist cap which were probanly derived from Napoleoonic War uniforms. Here we see a boy wearing a staw version. We note a younger boy wearing a velvet version with a kilt suit, we think in the 1890s.
Pill-box caps were primrily a British style, a style adopted by the British Army. We do not see a lot of examples in America. The ones we do see are all worn by boys. The kilt suit was only one of the outfits boys wore with these caps. The boy here is a good example (figure 1). We note very few such examples and the prevalence in the photography record is probanly a good reflection of actual prevalence.
Some boys wore sailor caps with kilt suits, although hats seem more common.
Another headwear option for kilt suits surely were Scotish styles like balmorals and glengarys. The styles would have been seen as particularly suitable for kilt suits as after all the kilt is a Scottish stled garment. And we do see some boys with these caps in the photograph record. They are not as common, however as we had anticipated. In fact we have foundrekatively few examples of these caps. We see more boys wearing other styles of caps as well as hats. We get the impressiin that most mothers chose popuar headwear styles rather than Scottish styles to go along with the Scottish unspred kilt suits. We are not sure yet about the relative popularity of the two styles. The Glengarry seems most common with Highland kilts. We are not sure that there were most common with kilt suits. We notice some differences in the styling. Red and white checks were used in many but not all of the caps. Some of the balmorals seem to have matched the suits rather than having destinctive Scottish styling. They were probably most common in fashionable big cities, but we are not positive about this. Tams were also worn which seem to have Scottish asociations as well. Here there is the complicatiin that balmorals are often difficult to detingush from balmorals in photographs.
We are not sure just what to call these caps. They look rather like adult smoking caps. We note some boys wearing kilt suits and Fauntleroy suits wearing them. They are similar to pill-coc caps, but done in plush materials. We are not sure about the colors. A good example is an unidentified Kansas boy in the 1870s. He skirt without a jacket, but we believe that the headwear was similar whether the boys wore a kilt suit ot jusy a skirt/kilt with a blouse.
Caps were made in different materials. The material is not always obvuousfrom the photigraph. Felt was one of the materials. Straw was another. It is usually possible to tell the caps made from straw. Th military style cap we see here was done in straw (figure 1).
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