Figure 1.--These boys presumably brothers look to be about 5-7 years old. The portrait is undated. We believe it was taken about 1940. Notice the younger boy is still waering a detachable Eton collar, although the type of suit is unclear. His older brother wears a double-breasted suit. Maby bboys that age at the time wore the American Eton suits withnjackets without lapels. A reader writes, "The younger boy's clothes (the jacket) is a bit too big for him making me think his mother had just purchased it. You can see that the sleeves go beyond the wrist so they are a bit too long. I cannot tell whether the cuffs were folded back on the jacket as the image is not clear enough. I can tell that the shoulders go beyond the boy's shoulders and I remember when my mother would buy clothes just a bit too big so I could get more than one wearing out of it. If you look carefully at the older brother, his shoulders are much closer in size to his jacket."

We have just begun to assess the chronology of` Eton collar blouses. Interestingly we see small Rton collars in the 1860s before the American Eton suit existed. They passed from style in the 1870s as collars increased in size. We begin to see these juvenile Eton suits suits in the 1920s. Many of the boys in the early images seem to we wearing large detabable Eton collars. We continue to see these detached Eton collars for some time. See examples in Sears catalogs into the mid-1940s. (This is, however, an illustration not an ad.). We note an actual family photograph, but it is undated (figure 1). We would estimate that it wa taken about 1940, but the late-30s or early-40s are both possible. It could be from the early-40s. By the 1950s bloues with soft collars had largely replaced the detachable collars. The size of the blouse collars become notably smaller. We notice two popular styles, Eton and Peter Pan collars. A good example from the 1950s is an unidentified New York boy. On the previous page we see another Eton collar blouse in the 1960s

Navigate the Boys' Historical Clothing Web Site:
[Introduction] [Activities] [Biographies] [Chronology] [Clothing styles] [Countries]
[Bibliographies] [Contributions] [FAQs] [Glossaries] [Images] [Links] [Registration] [Tools]
[Boys' Clothing Home]

Created: 7:11 AM 12/18/2014
Last updated: 7:12 AM 12/18/2014