English Little Lord Fauntleroy Suits: Fauntleroy Collar Types

Figure 1.--This unidentified boy wears a velvet collar-buttoning Fauntleroy suit wth a wide white collar. It looks to be edged wth eyelet lace. The suit is done with knickers. It looks to us like a detachable collar, but this is a little difficult to assess from photographs. We do not think the collar is part of a Fauntleroy blouse. A reder agrees, writing "I also think that the lace collar is not attached to a blouse which is why the boy is wearing the vestee." Notice the light-colored vest/vesee. Vests (waistcoats) were rarely worn with Fauntleroy blouses. The whole idea of Funtleroy blouse was to impress with all the fancy work. It wa not designed to be covered up. The portrait is undated, but we would guess was taken about 1890. The studio was A.E. & C. Fox in Bradford. This is a city in, northern England. Bradford grew in the 19th century, becominga a center of English industrialization. The Industrial Revolution which began in Britain was based on the textile industry--at first domestic wool and then imported cotton. Bradford was an early English industrial boomtown. It became 'wool capital of the world',before te shidt to cotton. Nicknames included 'Woolopolis' and 'Wool City'. The city's location along the eastern foothills of the Pennines, western Yokshire offered coal, iron ore, and soft water leading to the growth of a diversified manufacturing base.

One of the distinguishing features of a Little Lord Fauntleroy suit was an elaborate usually large white collar. The floppy boys and sashes were optional, but a large usually white collar was mandatory. There were two basic types of collars. One was detachable collars, many worn with shirtwaists. The other type was attached collars on blouses. Working with photographs it is not always eay to isentify which is which. There were a variety of detachable collars including fancy pin-on collars as well as plainer Eton collars. There were attached collars on Fauntleroy blouses, although the fancy Fauntleroy blouses were much more common in America than Britain. Unlike Eton collars these were not detachable collars as they were attached to the blouses. A lot of the English Fauntleroy collars were pinned on to the suit jacket the boy was wearing. The collars thus often came as separate items, but boys also wore Fauntleroy blouses where the collar was a part of the blouse. This was the most common garment in America, but in Britain the pin-on collars seem more common. This was in part because the collar-buttoning Fauntleroy suit was more popular in Britain than America.

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Created: 4:39 PM 4/3/2025
Last updated: 1:12 PM 4/5/2025