Sailor Suits: Gender Country Trend


Figure 1.--Here we see an unidentifuied brother and sister. The children wear near identical sailor outfirs except for the skirt and pants. We are not sure about the date, but we suspect the 1900s. The girl's outfit looks to be a different fabric. The only major difference is their caps. We are not sure of the country. We don't think they are American because of the footwear. We think hey may be Austrian, but are not sure.

Sailor suit styles and conventions varied from country to country. There were, however, limits on national styling because all sailor unifirms and children sailor outfits arecbased on the uniform style set by the British Royal Navy. As a result fifferent styles could be elborated around the margins, but not the basic style. Thus we see most such outfits with V-fronts and back flaps and with stripes as the principal decorative device. This was true for both boys and girls. The only major dofference was the vottoms, pants for boys and skirts for girls. There were greater variations in other garments, especially the dresses that the girls wore. While wa have looked into variationjs in country trends that has been primarily for the boys. We need to look at countrty trends for the girls' sailor outfits as well. HGS knows little about how girls sailor outfits varied from country to country at this time styles. We are not yet sure about the late 19th century. We know that sailor suits began as a boys' style in Britain (1840s). We have Queen Victoria to thank for this. We see children includiung girls wearing sailor throughout Europe an America by the 1870s, but mostly by well to do fashionsnle fmilies. We see more girls wearing sailor suits and dresses with sailoir styling (1880s). It is later thsat ewe see sailor outfits becoming standard garments (1890s). They seem especially popular in America, England, France, Germany, and Italy. By the turn-of-the 20th century, the sailor suit was no longe seen as primarily a boys syle. And in some countrues we see more girls wearing sailor styles than boys , especially school ahe girls. This seems especially pronounced in America.







HBC






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Created: 10:37 AM 8/30/2018
Last updated: 10:37 AM 8/30/2018