Figure 1.--This postcard back studio portrait shows a mother and her htree chikdren. They look to be abour 3-11 years old. The portait is undated, but looks like the 1910s. The younger boy wears a Fauntleroy suit. Their big sister wears a smock-like dress. Thee older boy wears a Norfolk-styled tunic suit with an Eton collar anb small boy. Notice the knee socks rather than long stockings, a useful dateing indicator. Hair bows wereespecially popular in the 1910s. The photographer was the Novelty Studio in Plymouth. .

Most of the 20th century tunic suit images we have found date to the 1900s and 10s. We have not found any dated 1910s English examples yet. We have found images we think date to the 1910s. If course our subjective dating is not as good as having a verifiable dated exanple, but we have to work with what we have. The nice aspect of internet publishing is that the rext can be easily edited and revised. Thus we are posting our preliminary assessment and will revise it if more information becomes available or if readers offer a better dating of the images. If our assessments are correct, we still see quite a number of tunic suits in the 1910s. Norfolk styling with Eton collars. was popular. Avd it does bot seemn to have been a dashion style for the affluent which it became in the 1920s. Ot seems to have been more of a middle-cl;ass style. We see school age children wearing tunics in the 1910s, perhaps younger school age childre but still school age children, wearing these tunics. The accompmanying clothing and the clothes of others in the photograph provide useful dating clues. We think the popularity of tunic suits was declining, but our limited English archive may also be a factor. We think that the boys on the previous page are a good example, although it appears to be an outfit for a pre-school boy. The school-age suits were done with a little more mature accessories like a normal Eton collar, but we do not see them much at school. .

Created: 2:22 AM 4/8/2020
Last updated: 2:22 AM 4/8/2020