American Kilt Suit Styles: Sailor Styling--Garments
Figure 1.--This cabinet card portrait shows an inidentified boy wearing a sailor blouse with a small lace collar and sailor blouse wuith a kilt-skirt. Notice that th blouse and kilt skirt are not made in the sam fabric. We have mo idea about color although we would guess the sailor blouse was blue. The skirt has no kilt features, except for the pleats.
The boy looks to be about 4-yerars old. We are not at all sure about the date, but would guess it was taken about 1880. The studio was Herman & Kopp in Chicago, Illinois.
The two garments with sailor kilt suits were the sailor blouse and kilt. The major contant, however, is that the sailor-styled kilt suits were done with blouses rather than jackets. The sailor styling was all done with the blouse. And these blouses followed the stylistic trends at the time. As far as we can tell, they were standard sailor blouses not specifically designed to be worn wih kilt-skirts. We do not see sailor styling on the kilt itself, although the color and material might match. We do see some sailor styling on sailor suit pants, but we have never noted this on the kilt-skirts worn with sailor blouses. This seems to be the case with the boy here (figure 1). We are not sure if the outfit was bought as a ready-to-wear suit or mother bought the blouse and kilt separately. In the 19th century of course the garments might have been sewn at home, meaning matching material could be easly explained. We think, however, that this was probably less likely for sailor blouses with traditional styling. They were not the only blouse kilt suits, but they were one of the most important. While some of the sailor suit kilts matched the blouse. Many were done in diffrent materials, detailing, and colors.
