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excerpts from

MOTHER'S LITTLE DARLINGS -  1900-1910

written and illustrated by Pepper Hume

 

            After centuries of children being dressed like miniature adults, reason finally prevailed in the 20th century. A popular book, The Elegant Housewife, revealed that upper class families now encouraged their children to be children in both spirit and dress. The middle classes quickly fell in line. The author advocated simplicity in children’s dress but also observed, "Nothing so enhances the delicate tender bloom of a child’s complexion as a soft frame of lace."

This attitude coupled with the perennial popularity of the book Little Lord Fauntleroy condemned many small boys to the additional indignity of lace collars with their long curls!

Children went through sharply defined age groups as they grew. Babies and toddlers were classed as infants until the age of three and were kept in long dresses, boys and girls alike. By school age boys were dressed as boys. Girls’ skirts and boys’ pants were knee-length. From fourteen to twenty-one they were considered misses and youths. Misses skirts dropped to ankle-length in prescribed stages and youths went into long pants.

We will discuss children primarily by age, focusing on those items particular to that age or gender:

INFANTS    -    GIRLS and SMALL BOYS    -    SCHOOL BOYS    -    MISSES

Except for the stages of misses’ skirt lengths, the exact age of transition from infant styles to children’s and so on was flexible. The child’s size, mental development, and the parents’ attitudes (or finances) were all factors in deciding, for example, when a boy might start wearing short pants instead of dresses.

Once boys graduated into long pants by the age of fifteen, their wardrobe was distinguishable from men’s only in size. Oddly, boys were dressed as girls for the first three to five years of their lives but were allowed to dress like men as early as twelve while girls could not wear adult styles until twenty.

The length of female skirts was strictly governed by age. Until the age of fourteen, girls wore skirts that ended just below the knee. At fourteen skirts could drop to mid-calf. At sixteen, skirts were allowed to reach the ankles but absolutely not below the ankles.

 
The flannel bands kept the baby’s abdomen wrapped for the first few weeks, presumably to protect the navel until it healed, as well as to support the newborn spine. Finer bands with shoulder straps were made of soft cashmere.  
 
Those long skirts and slips were twice as long as the baby! Slips had sleeves and fancier ones were used for christening gowns.

 

 

  
Little girl dresses had wide collars or yokes outlined with a wide flounce or bertha, and were still decorated in the same spirit as their mother’s. In 1900, waist gathers were concentrated across the front and the center back but smooth at the sides. Skirts, always full and gathered or pleated at the waist, were attached to an underwaist to support their weight from the shoulders.  
A wide flounce that draped over the shoulders and all around, but was cut on a curve rather than gathered, was called a bertha. The outer edge might be cut in square points or some novelty shape.  Such a bertha could be a separate piece to be worn over a plain dress.  
Bonnets were for babies, so young children could hardly wait to get into Tam O’Shanters. Basically a pancake set onto a fitting band, most tams resembled French sailor hats. Tams were frequently decorated with braid and a center pompom or a tassel on a cord. The college tam mimicked a square mortar board complete with tassel and front pointed band. One pretty tam had an oversize crown gathered to the band and allowed to fluff freely, like an oversized beret or toque.  Tams were made of soft cottons and wools like lawn or flannel, stiffer cottons like piqué, velvet, or knits.  
Boys’ suits were cut like men’s in the same fabrics and colors. Their sack coats were single breasted with rounded bottoms or double breasted with square bottoms. Suits could be two-piece or three, including a vest. For little boys up to eight, suits might have a matching dickey called a vestee to wear under the vest instead of a shirt and tie. Some sack coats had Kitchener yokes front and back. The bottom edge of a Kichener yoke was curved and pointed like a bird in flight.

 

 

  
Party dresses for misses, not yet being "out" in society, carried more taboos than merely skirt-length as in daytime wear. Absolutely no extreme décolletage and nothing sleeveless. In fact, party frocks appeared to be identical to daytime dresses but made in palest tints of fabrics like silk batiste, mull, crepe-de-chine, china silk, point d’esprit, and, of course, lace. Misses were not allowed to wear velvet, satin, brocade, or metallic tissues.  

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Last modified: March 27, 2004