Figure 1.--The Fauntleroy blouse is commonly seen as a formal garment. Here we see a boy playing in his backyard. He is wearing a Fauntleroy blouse. Notice the large ruffled collar. |
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The Fauntleroy blouse is commonly seen as a formal dress up garment. This was especially the case of white blouses done in fine fabrics. And of course it certainly was. The Fauntleroy suit was a boy's best dress up garment, worn for parties, church, and other formal occassions. At the time, parents saw events as formal that we would now consider casual. Thus there were plenty of opportunities for a boy to wear these suits. Among them was a formal studio photographic portrait. these blouses were, however, not alwats worn for formal occassions. We see boys in the 1890s and 1900s wearing these blouses to school or even to play. These more casual blouses were still often elaborate wuith large ruffled collars, but done in less expensive cotton fabrics. We see them done in colors and patterns. And of course boys were less likely to wear nows with them. Social class was a factor here. A working-class boy might wear one of these less ecpensive blouses when dressing up while a more well-to-do boy might wear them as a play garment. Unfortunately when the Fauntleroy blouse was most popular in the 1880s-90s, snapshots were not very common. After 1900 when the Kodak Brownie made amateur photography easdier, we have snapshots better showing how these garments were worn. And they seem fairly standard for middle-class boy who by the 1900s we wearing them, but not as part of a formal Fauntlerpy suit. The boy here playing in a Fauntleroy blouse is a good example (figure 1). We see two brothers dressed up in whire Fauntleroy blouses. Becaiuse of the images taken at or near home, we think it is fairly easy to identify them as middle class families. .
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