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American boys ave worn a variety of sailor suits with a range of garments with sailor styling. Sailor outfits for many years were some of the most popular garments for boys. Most of the garnments worn in Britain were also worn in America. Often the garments were worn as suits. The standard sailor suit was the middy blouse and matching pants. Various types of pants were wore with sailor suits. Two garments, however, were often worn separately, especially sailor hats and middy blouses. Sailor hats and other headwear were worn with a variety of outfits. Middy blouses were also worn with a vriety of clothes, often not matching pants making a suit. Reefer jackets were another item that was worn with both sailor suits as well as other outfits. We also notice younger boys wearing sailor tunics.
American boys wore a variety of sailor headwear. We notice various styles of hats and caps. Sailor hats were more commonly worn by younger boys. Hats were also more common for girls. Boys did not always wear sailor headwear with their sailor suits. We in fact see a range of different headwear. But of course matching sailor headwear was often chosen to go with sailor suits. Some suits came with matching headwear, but the headwear was often purchased separately.
The classic sailory blouse was the standard shirt-like garment done with sailor styling. These blouses were made in many different forms and styles. The classic middy blouse had the destinctive sailor sytling and blouse at the waist with a draw string. Many were also made with button-on styling. We also notice shirts with with sailor styling, but these were generally for younger boys after the sailor outfits had largely passed out of style. The basic middy blouse had a V-neck front, often with stripe detailing, and a flap back with the detailing repeated. Many middy blouses had traditionally styling, meaning styled like naval uniforms. The U.S. Navy of course set the standard, but like other navies in the late-19th and early 20th centuries, the basic styles were set by the British Royal Navy. Clothing designers, however, game up with a wide range of styles and varied detailing. They were usually blue or white or a combination blue and white, but many other colors were also used. The traditional styling with three stripes on the middy blouse was a widely followed standard. There were both pull-over and button-up styles. Middy blouses were often worn as part of a suit, but they were also worn by themselves without matching pants. These middy blouses were the primary sailor garment worm by American boys. After World War I we begin to see sailor shirts. These were mote like shirts and not blouses at the waist. They were usually dome for younger cgildren without shirt tails. Many were button on garments. While they were commonly called blouses, they were actually more like shirts. But the term blouse evolved into a shirt without tails for womwn, girls, and younger boys that had nothing to do with the bloucing that origininally gave the garment its name.
An entegral part of the sailor suit and middy blouse was the sailor sacarf. The scarfe is a variously shaped cloth worn around the neck or over the head. Sailor scarves were wotn around the neck, under the back flap and "V" collar and tied at the apex of the V front. Scarves were worn for both wamth and style, it it case of the sailor suit it was or style. Both boys and girls wore them. Many sailor blouses came with scarves. This was more the case with the pull-over middy blouses than the button-up jackets. We notice quite a few photograohs of boys wearing sailor blouses with scarves. Not all boys wore their sailor suits with a scarfe. but quite a number did. This was especially the case in formal studio portrait, but we also notice scarves in the more informal snapshots taken by parents. They were tied with a simple knot. Very different than the more elaborately tied German knot. The scarves were mostly navy blue or black silk scarves. This is what actual U.S. Navy sailors wore. We have also noted white and colored scarves, espcually red. We even notice patterened scarves such s plaid scarves While most were plain dark scarves, there was some variety. Quite a number of the better suits had embroidered designs like the ones done on the moddy blouse dickies.
American boys wore a range of pants with sailor suits, including bell bottoms, knee pants, bloomer knickers, knickers, and short pants. Short pants sailor suits were less common in America than in Europe. Interestingly, some sailor suits were available in long pants at times in which younger boys rarely wore long trousers. Thus the variety of pants worn with sailor suits was more varied than with standard sack suits. Presumably long pants were acceptable because this was what actual sailors wore with their uniforms.
We see both bell bottoms and long pants, some made with stripes. The choice seems to have depended on individual family preferences. An example of long pants with stripes are the St. Clar boys. The types of pants varied over time. Kneepants were popular in the late 19th-century. Most suits were made with knee pants at this time because that was what most American boys wore. After the turn-of -the 20th century we see a number of suits made with bloomer knickers which were mostly worn with as part of tunc suits. An example is Harold Howes in 1907. We see some boys wearing knicker sailor suits, but thdey were not very popular and only worn for a few years, mostly during the 1910s. Short pants became more common in the 1920s, but sailor suits in America also began to be worn by increasingly younger boys.
Tunic suits became very popular for American boys at the turn-of-the 20th century. The single most popular tunic style was the sailor tunic.
Reefer jackets were also common during the winter.
There were also other items sych as hats and caps as wll as coats, scarves, dickies, under shirts (often stripped), and other items. We notice American boys wearing mamy types od dickies with a variety of decorations. A good example is an unidentified Ohio boy, probably in the 1910s. Whistles were especially popular with the boys.
There were of course no sailor-styled hosiery and footwear, but we notice trends concerning bothgbworn wity sailor suits. American boys over time have also worn a variety of stockings and socks with sailor suits as well as different kinds of shoes and sandals. Sailor suits were worn by boys for almost a century. Over thst times there were many changes in both hosiery and footwear. For many years hightop shoes were common. In the 20th century, we see more varied shoe tyoes as well as standards. Sailor suits have also been worn with many different types of hosiery. We see dark long stockings in the 19th century. Hosiery becomes more varied in the 20th century. We see many boys wearing socks in the 20th century and many younger boys began wearing white socjs and stockings. The types of footwear and hosiery in fact appears to have changed more than the styling of the sailor suits themselves. The colors of both footwear and hosiery had also changed. Notably children's footwear was quite similar in the early 20th century, but in the 1920s began to diverge significantly Boys wearing sailor suits in the 19th century, mostly wore high-top shoes. Younger boys by the turn-of-the century began wearfing strapo shoes and sandals. And older boys gradually began wearing low-cut oxfords as high-tops graduallt went out of style in the 1920s.
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