Figure 1.-- This unidentified boy looks to be about 4 years old. As it is a tintyoe portrait, we have no idea where it was taken. Tintype did not have studio information. It must be somewhere in the North given how he is so well outfitted for winter--he would be fine in a blizzard. , including a scarf and gloves. The boy wears a light-colored overcoar over a plaid kilt, presunably part of a kilt suit. Notice what loooks like a matching beret or tam. There is a hanky in his pocket. The dealer suggests it wss a Civil War era portrait taken some time during the 1860s. We think it may have been takn a little lter, either the lte-60s or ealy-70s. The sparse bavkground loks like the 1860s, but the close up positioning and striped long stockings look more like the early-70s to us. Thre us some color tinting.

We have little information on the overcoats boys wore with kilt suits. This would have been common in the nirthern states. And as most boys wearing kilt suits generally came from families in comfortable circumstances, it would seem that they would also have purchased overcoats. For the most parts, mothers during the winter had boys take off their overcoats for studio portraits. Thus while we have a very substantial collection of boys wearing kilt suits in our American archive, we have virtuly no images of these boys wearing overcoats. We believe that overcoats for younger boys tended to be similar to the overcoats worn by girls. We do not, however, have enough images to confirm this. One image we have shows a boy wearing a white or light-colored coat, with dark contrasting piping (figure 1). This seems to us like a coat a girl might have worn. Older boys more commonly wore dark-colored coats. The cut is also a little different below the waist to accomodate skirted garments.

Navigate the Boys' Historical Clothing kilt pages:
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[Return to the Main kilt page]
[Scottish kilts] [Scottish boys clothing] [Scottish school uniform] [Highland dance]
[Irish kilts] [Irish boys clothing] [Irish step dancing]
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Navigate the Related HBC pages:
[Lace collar] [Rounded-crown hat] [Floppy bows] [Cut-away jackets] [Kilt suits] [Velvet] [Long stockings] [Shoes]

Created: 8:46 AM 4/7/2015
Last updated: 8:46 AM 4/7/2015