*** sailor suits : country chronologies








Sailor Suits: Country Chronologies


Figure 1.--This portrait of a Bremen brother and sister is undted. We would say it was taken in the 1890s. A German expert tells us the very early 1900s is also possible. Notice the props. The boy has a book and the girl flowers.

Some information is available on the chronological pattern of sailor suits in various countries.It was in England in the first quarter of the 19th century when someone had the inspiration that boys should wear sailors trousers. English seamen had been dressing in pantaloons since the 17th Century. The style receive enormous popularity after Queen Victoria during the 1840s, after breeching, began dressing the young princes in sailor suits children in sailor suits. This fashion was triggered by Winterhalter's portrait of Prince Edward (later Edward VII) in a white sailor suit and straw hat at the age of 5. The sailor suit achieved immense popularity quickly, especially in England and Germany, both countries with powerful navies, and both with royal families that had strong naval links. Both the British and German royal families dressed their children in the new fashion. The sailor suit also became enormously popular in republican America and after 1848 France--without the prestige of a royal family. By the 1870s the sailor suit was probably the single most important boys' fashion throughout Europe and America. Even girls began wearing them--decades before the idea of women sailors could even be conceived. Sailor suit fashions and conventions for wearing them varied greatly from year to year. Many of the differences are based on the uniform differeces of the various national navies.

America

HBC has realtively little information about sailor suits in America during the mid-19th century. Queen Victory helped establish the sailor suit as a style for boys (1840s). It was then that the Queen began dressing the young princes in the uniforms of an enlisted British sailor. We see sailor suits fairly quickly appearing as boys' outfits in Europe. The fashion did not immediately spread go America. We are not yet sure how rapidly it spread to America, but we do begin to see some examples by the 1870s. We do know that it had become an enormously popular style by the late 20th century (1890s). And it was very popular at the gurn-of-the 20th century. We see boys commonly wering them (1900s). We alkso see many boys wearing sailor suits, but fewer older boys (1910s). The popularity of the sailor suit began to decline after World War I (1920s) as girls increasingly began wearing sailor styles. Fewer and fewer boys wanted to wear them (1930s). We do see younger primary boy wearing them (1930s). We still see some younger boys wearing them (1940s) and they virtually disappeared for boys (1950s). We continue to see girls wearing dresses woith a varistion of sailor styles.

Denmark

We note a painting by a Danish artist of a boy wearing a sailor suit dated 1895.

England

The origins of the boys' sailor suit or vague. Apparently it was in England during the first quarter of the 19th century when someone had the inspiration that boys should wear sailors' trousers. (Some sources suggest an even earlier appearance of the sailor suit as boys' atire, but as yet I cannot confirm that.) It is not known who first coceived of the idea. It is known with certainty, however, who popularized it. It was Queen Victoria who began to dress the young princes in sailor suits during the 1840s. The 5-year old Prince of Wales (the future Edward VII) was not the first English boy to wear a sailor suit. It was, however, when in 1846 the prince's portrait was painted onboard the royal yacht during the Queen's visit to Ireland that the sailor suit began to attract the interest of English mothers and eventually mothers around the world. The prince wore a scaled down version of a real Royal Navy uniform. The uniform was arefully chosen to be an enlisted man's sailor suit. This can not have been an acident. It was almost certainly a carefully chosen decision calculated to give a favorable impression of the monarchy to the British people. Unfortunately HBC does not yet have details on precisely how the uniform was selected.

France

French boys commonly wore sailor suits for more than a century. HBC does not know of French boys wearing sailor suits before the 1840s and Queen Victoria began dresing the princes in sailor suits. I am not sure just when sailor suit crossed the Atlantic and began catching on as a boy's fashion. I have not noted French sailor suits and hats in the 1840s and 1850s, but that may because of the limired available information. The sailor suit as a boy's fashion seem to have caught on in France by the 1860s and had become one of the most popular boys' fashions by the 1870s. I currently have only limited information on French sailor suit fashions. French syles do not seem to have followed British styles as closely as in some countries, in part because French naval uniforms varied more from English styles than is the case in many countries. Older French boys wore knickers in the 1920s, but not with sailor suits. Boys commonly wore sailor suits at ages up to 12-13 years, with both short and long pants--some suits came with both. This suggests a somewhat different approach to long and short pants than in England and America. Most French boys stoped wearing sailor suits after World War II, especially in the 1950s. Some younger boys did continue to wear them. Almost always the younger boys wore short pants sailor suits, often with quite short shorts. They are now not commonly worn, but still have not totally disappeared.

Germany

The sailor suit was as popular, if not more popular, in Germany than any weher in Germany. The suits appeared later in Germany than some other countries. Prussia and the other Grman states had no navy of any significance. Once the German Kaiser and Austrian Emperor started building a navy in the late 1880s, however, their popularity for boys in both Germany and Austria took off. The fact that the wife of the crown prince Frederich was the eldest dauther of England's Queen Victoria who had first dressed the princes in the uniform of enlisted sailors. Virually every German boy in the late 19th and early 20th century wore a sailor suit. They were commonly worn to school by German boys.At this tine, however most of our information on German sailor suits is limited to the 20th century.

Greece

HBC notes Greek boys wearing kneepants sailor suits by the 1870s. Noted Greek painter Nikiforos Lytras painted a boy dressed in a sailor suit in 1879. Sailor suits appear to have been a common outfit for Greek boys in the late 19th and early 20th century.

(The) Netherlands

The sailor suit was one of the most important Dutch boy's style for perhaps three generations. We still have limited information on Dutch sailor suits, but they appear to have been widely worn by the 1880s. Sailor suits were normally worn with kneepants or knickers. After World War I (1914-18) short pants sailor suits become more important, but were worn by younger boys.

Switzerland

Sailor suits were a popular style for Swiss boys as was the case in most European countries. HBC is uncertain as to when Swiss boys began wearing sailor suits, presumably at about the same time that boys in neighboring countries began wearing them. By the turn of the 20th century, Swiss boys were commonly wearing sailor suits. As there were no required school uniforms, primary school children commonly wore sailor suits to school. This was probably more common in the German speaking areas of Switzeland than the Frenc area as smocks were so common in the French-speaking catons. Silor suits continue to be commonly worn in the 1920s, but began to decline in popularity during the late 1920s and 1930s. A Swiss reader reports to HBC that in the 1940s, "I never had a sailor suit and I believe only very few mates had them. They were not so popular and presumably reserved for sundays or important occasions, like First Communion, until the cassocks took over.






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Created: 7:11 PM 3/4/2007
Last updated: 9:28 PM 3/5/2007