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Some boys wore headwear with tunic suits , but most based on the photographic record did not. Given thevadvent of family snapshots, we have a much better idea of headwear with tunic than with 19th century styles. There is an association with broad-brimmed sailor hats because of Buster Brown, but most images we have found show boys withour headwear. A few boys wore these broad-brimmed sailor hats. The Los Angeles boy here is a good example (figure 1). This was, however, not as common as often believed, Buster Brown not withstanding. The wide-brimmed hat was rather inpractical and worn primarily for dress occasions. We also see sailor caps which seem to have been a popular choice and more common than the wide-brimmd hats. We do not note matching headwear made in the same material. Some mothers did match colors as we can see here. We see other headwear styles being worn, including types on the previous page that we cannot yet identify.
We notice tunics commonly being worn with hats. This was the case throughout the 19th century. We have very little information available on the first half of the 19th century when the photographic record was either non-existent or very limited. We knpw much more about the second half of the 19th and and early-20 century. We see boys wearing mostly hats with tunics. This was presumably because hats were so common in the 19th century. We see caps in the 19th century, but hats based on the photographic record seem much more prevalent. we continue to see them in the early-20th century. The two most common hats we haved note in the early-20th century were wide-brimmed sailor hats and boaters. The wide-brimmed hats are especially associated with tunic suits. A factir here was hecage conventions for tunics. This was the headwear, for example, we commonly see Buster Brown depicted with. We begin to see more caps in he 20th century , especially by the 1910s. But we mostly see hats being worn with tunic suits. We behin to see sharply fewer boys wearing hats after world war II in the 1920s, but we also see the unic disappearing as an important garmant.
We see more different cap styles worn with tunic suits than hats. And we thinknin twas caps that ere first worn with tunic suits. The Oliver Twist vap was worn during the early-19th century, butg this was probably more common in Britin than America. We notice mny different styles in the lte-9th century. None of these caps, however, became associated ith tunic suits like the wide-brimmed hat.
The peanie was similar to a peaked rounded crown cap, better known in Britan as a school cap. The difference of course is the peak or bill. This is a major difference with the more modern peaked cap. In the 19th and early-20th centuries, however, many of these peaked caps has very small peaks. In some cases the peak is so small that theyalmost look like beanies. And we have found a few images in which they actually look like beanies. Beanies and peaked caps may have been chosen because the color and even the material could havevbeenbchosen to match the tunic suit. We do not, howver, see many examples of either caps and beanies being worn with tunics. Buster Brown was never pictures with these choices. We believe that many mothers saw caps as only suitable for somewhat older boys. We believe that given our very substantial American archive that the prevalence in the images we have found are a realtively good indicator of actual prevalence. Of course mother may have affected headwear choices for formal studio portraits, but note in the home snapshot here the boy is wearing a rather formal wide-brimmed hat (figure 1).
The peaked rounded crown cap was a popular cap in the 1900s, but somewhat less so in the 1910s as the flap cap became standard. Tunics of course were very popular in both decades, We see some boys wearing peaked caps with tunics, but never flat caps. Age conventiins were a factor, but notavly some of the older boys wearing tunics (6-7 yeard ols) du wear knicker suits with fat caps. Whil we see a few boys wearing peaked caps with tunics, we have not found one boy doing so with fkat caps. This is not to zay it never occurred, but our archive is large enoughtosay it never occurred with any frequency.
Tunics were worn throughout the 19th century before becoming enormously popular in the early-20th century. As a result the headwear worn with them varied, affected by the popular cintemporary headwear styles. We see boys in the arky 19th century wearing peaked military caps, sometimes with a tassle, in the early-19th century. This cap was a popular military style.
We also see sailor caps which seem to have been a popular choice and more common than the wide-brimmd hats. Sailor caps were popular for younger boys and more paractical than wide-brimmed hats commonly associated with Buster Brown suits and tuivs in general. We do not note matching headwear made in the same material. Some mothers did match colors as we can see here with a sailor hat (figure 1). There were two sailor cap styles. One was the saucer stylw which Buster often wire. Th other was a softer style.
We see other headwear styles being worn, including types on the previous page that we cannot yet identify.
Tunics were worn by American boys for fore than a century, nost of the 19th and into the early-20th centuries. The basic tunic harments did not change, although there were stylistic trends. The accompanying garments did change. This was especially true of headwear. Unfortunatel because photography did not appear until the 1940s and was somewhat limited until the 1860s and the CDV, our chronolohgical information is limited. Another problem is that tunics as far as we can tell were not widely worn in the early-19th century. Based on a few drawings, we think tunics were at first mostly worn with caps
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