Figure 1.-- This new-style cabinet card portrait shows two brothers with longish hair. They are wearing striped button-up sailor blouses with bloomer knickers. Note the large white sailor collrs and dickies. The inscription on the back reads "July 3d, 1901, Evert 9 years, Bayard 6". The studio was C.M. Gilbert in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. There also were studios in Washington, D.C. and Atlantic City, New Jersey, This new style card had the studuo information arranged didderently and was more slender than the classic-style cards (4" wide x 6 7/8" high). It is mounted on dark gray cardboard, apopular color after the turn-of-the century.

There were two basic types of sailor blouses. as sailor blouses were a style tht developed aftr theinvenbtion of photography. There is a vast photographic record show casing these garments and trends over time. We see both pull-over (draw-string) and button-up sailor blouse styles. Only the pull-over blousess could have the draw-string hem feature that caused the blouse to blouse- or billow-out. Tge boy here wears the pull-over style (figure 1). While the garment got its name from this feature, the real characteristic of a blouse is that it does not have shirt-tails. Thus many if not most blouses buttoned up rather than have the draw-string blouse feature. We certainly see many draw-string blouses, but the blouses that buttoned up seem even more common. Both were done in many different style and we see both both before and after the turn-of-the 20th century. We are still working on both the chronology and the gender trends involved with both these types of sailor blouses. Both were still very common before World War I (1914-18), but after the early-1920s rapidly declined in popularity, especially for boys. They comtinued to be popular for girls for a while older, especially the pull-pver draw-string style. We also notice button- sailor blouses, but these were usually done with front buttons.

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Created: 7:14 PM 12/29/2014
Last updated: 7:14 PM 12/29/2014