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We believe that tunics were widely worn by English boys. I do not know to what extent tunics were worn in the 18th century. I have seen relatively few images of English boys wearing tunics in the early 19th century, but believe that they were widely worn. Tunics were a common style in the early 19th Century and were still being worn at mid-century. While we have few portraits of boys in tunic suits in the early 19th century, we do have several photographic images of English boys wearing tunics at mid-centurty. We note the Tennyson boys wearing tunics in the 1860s, but are unsure how common that was. I have seen relatively few images of English boys in turn of the 20th century tunic suits. The tunics suits worn by American and French boys in the early 20th Century seem much less common in England. English boys seem to have worn short pants suits without the long tunics worn in France and America and were much more plain than the French suits. Both the sailor style and Russian blouse style were worn. We know little about the conventions or social class destinctions concerning English boys wearing tunics.
HBC has classified these garments a tunic. This is so that we have a common term ti use throughout the vsarious pagds. Many other terms were in different countries over time. We notice one source describing the garment as 'jacket bodies with a basque'. We belkrve the reference is English. The basque refers to a closely fitted bodice or jacket extending past the waistline over the hips and became cused mostly as lingerie. In this case the reference probably refers to the definded waistline. We notice tunics both with and without defined waistlines.
We believe that tunics were widely worn by English boys. The popularity and styles, however, have varied over time.
I do not know to what extent tunics were worn in the 18th century. I have seen relatively few images of English boys wearing tunics in the early 19th century, but believe that they were widely worn. Tunics were a common style in the early 19th Century and were still being worn at mid-century. While we have few portraits of boys in tunic suits in the early 19th century, we do have several photographic images of English boys wearing tunics at mid-centurty. We note the Tennyson boys wearing tunics in the 1860s, but are unsure how common that was. I have seen relatively few images of English boys in turn of the 20th century tunic suits. The tunics suits worn by American and French boys in the early 20th Century seem much less common in England. English boys seem to have worn short pants suits without the long tunics worn in France and America and were much more plain than the French suits. This is not to say that they were not worn, only that they were not as common.
We have only limited information on styling at this time. Our archive is too limited to develop this tpoic to any extent at this time. The tunics worn in the early- and mid-19th century were destinctive to those worn at the turn of the 20th century. Our information on styling is still limited. We know relatively little about tunics in the early 19th century before the development of photography. We note quite a range of styles at the mid-19th century. We see some tunics that were very plain andothers that had detailing such as highighted colored strips. At the turn of the 20century we see tunics like the Buster Brown suits worn in America. Both the sailor style and Russian blouse style were popular.
We are not entirely sure about the age convdntions for wearing tunics abnd tunic suits in England. As there are very few images for the early- and mid-19th century, we do not have the sources needed to assess age. We note younger school boys depicted wearing tunic suits. Even after photography was invented (1839), realtively few Daguerreotypes and other early format photographs were taken in England. Thus we do not have a photographic record to assess until about 1860. As far as we can tell English boys wore tunics to about age 10 years, perhaps a little older in the early-19th century. This varied from family to family and was entirely at mothers discression. Younger boys through mid-century might wear their tinic suits with pantalettes. Notable popular conventions do not seem to hsve become important until the late-19th century. It was a style worn afrer breeching which means about 3-4 years of age. This begin to change in the 1880s when we see fewer older boys wearing tunics. And by the turn-of the century they were mostly wirn by pre-school boys.
We have begun to acquire some information about the garments worn with tunic outfits. Many were suits, although the pants might not match the tunic. We note many boys wearing military caps with tunic suits. We see several styles of these caps. The military caps may be asociated with schoolwear. Military caps seem the most common headwear at least boys with short hair. We are unsure what kind of headwear boys with long hair wore with tunics. Short hair was of course much more popular. Tunics were often worn as suits. We have noted various types of trousers worn by English boys with tunics. The photographic record shows boys wearing pantalettes, long pants, bloomer knickers, and knee pants being worn with tunics. We see them being worn irn with both contrasting and matching pants. Younger boys might wear pantalettes. We see some boys in the first half of the 19th century wearing strap shoes and white stockings with tunic outfits. This may have been common around home. For school wea the boys seem to have worn more sunstantial footear. We are not yet sure about this. The footwear and hosiery seem similar to skeleton suits, probably both outfits were worn by younger boys. We know little about the conventions or social class destinctions concerning English boys wearing tunics. We think tunics were mostly worn by boys from upper and middle-class families. We believe that they were less common with working-class boys. The limited number of images, however, makes this difficult to assess definitively.
We know little about the conventions or social class destinctions concerning English boys wearing tunics. We think tunics were mostly worn by boys from upper abd middke0=-class families. We believe that they were less common with wirking-class boys. The limited number of images, however, makes this difficult to assess defintively.
We are not sure just how these garments were worn. We suspect they were more of an everyday garment than a dress up garment, but we can not yet say this definitively. We do know that younger boys wore tunics to school. They were even used as a school uniform at some schools, especially the hospital schools.
We have very little color information on English tunics. This of course is because we have found few paintings. and photography was also black and white. The tunics worn at early grammar schools seem to have been primrily blue. We have many more images with the invention of photography. but this was all black and white photography in the 19th century. We do get some colorized images, meaning black and white images with colored tint hand applied. While colorists could not produce shades of hues closely, they could get the basic colors correct. While a colorized image is not as strong evidence as a color photograph, colorists would not have picked an outlandish color. And mothers who ordered a colorized image, generally wanted them done in the same colors in which the boy was dressed. Most of the images were have seen show boys wearing dark colored tunic suits. We think blue was a common color. We note a painting which suggests a dark green velver tunic. We think brown and grey were also common, but this needs to be confirmed. We believe that the tunics were more likely to be boy suit colors than dress colors which could be more colorful.
Virtually all of the images of English tunics we have found show boys wearing flat or solid colored tunics. We rarely show patterned material or fancy decoration. Most of our fashion information comes from the photographic record which means almost entirely beginning about 1860 when the CDV began to become important. We have found very few Dags and Ambros to illustrate fashions earlier (1840s-50s). We have found some painted portaits, but these are also very few in numbers, especially compared to the number of images that photography has made possible. And the painted portraits we have found all show the tunic to have been a very plain, basically utilitarian garment, although it seems to have been worn by middle- and upper-class boys. We see no evidence of working-class boys wearing tunics, but of course working-class boys were not photographed as extensively as boys from more affluent families. We have found very few images of tunics that were not very plain, flat (solid) color and undecorated. A boy's plaid tunic is a rare example. We suspect it was for schoolwear. Even less common were decorated tunics.
Several individual boys wearing tunic suits are archived on HBC. An a few are named. We note a Bean boy (1829). His older brother wears a sjeketin suit. We also have a portrait of Henry Elton (1831). Denis Bond wearing what looks like a dark green velvet tuunic with white plain pantalettes (1848). In these eraly paonted portaits we are able to see the colors, but it is often not entirely vlear if they are weearing panyalettes or oants wuth their tunics. With ther invntion of photgograohy, we have many more images to work with. Photograph shows Hallam and Lionel Tennyson wearing various tunic outfits. The pants changed somewhat with the age of the boys. We notice Cedric Arthur Mason wearing a heavy wool tunic suit about 1912.
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