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The major garments were sailor outfits. Here the tops were the same for boys and girls. The bottoms differed with the girls wearings skirted bottoms rather than pants like the boys. There were two basic types of girls sailor outfits, dresses and blouses. The bodices of sailors dresses were comparable to the blouses often called middy blouses. The royal princes began wearing sailor suits (1840s). The style for boys was quickly picked up by the general public. The girls began wearing sailor dresses after a decade or two (1870s). Sailor dresses were especially popular in everal European countries furing the early-20th century. Here we see sisters in 1938, we think nin Hungary (figure 1). The influence was German. We not only see sailor dresses, but dresses with sailor influences, but not full implementation of the sailor styling. This was the more common fashion for adult women, but we see it for girls as well. Sailor suits were at first more common for boys, but in the 20th century this began to change, but in modern times as boys stopped to wear sailor suits, we see sailor styling persisting much longer for girls. The other major sailor outfit was a middy blouse and skirt. Eventually girls not only wore sailor dresses, but middy blouses and skirts. Middy blouses became very popular for girls in the early 20th century. They were commonly worn to school. Of course when girls began wearing middy blouses, they became less popular with the boys. This was surely a factor in the declining popularity of sailor outfits for boys. Of huge importance was the adoption of the middy blouse for gym uniforms at school. For some time these gym outfits were worn with bloomers rather than shorts. When these outfits were most popular (late-19th and early-20th century), the blouses were worn by both boys and girls, although the popularity varied widely from country to country.
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Navigate the Historic Boys' Clothing Web sailor pages:
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