Little boys outfits

[Jenn12]

I'm looking for ideas for my boys' outfits. If any of you have pictures of a higher class outfit, could you post the link. I need to know what to tell my seamstress that I want. Thanks.

[Ross L. Lamoreaux]

Are you talking prominant, upper class, or dressier middle class? How old are the boys, as that will affect the types of garments as well. A lad up to five may still be in gowns, but above that you have many options from trimmed tunics, jackets, coats, etc.

[Jenn12]

My boys will both be 5 this year. And I've learned that they were only in gowns if they were not potty trained. Once they were potty trained, they started to wear the pants and jackets. I'm looking for fancier middle class. My husband portrays a minister and we have adopted african american boys so I want them to be in clothes that make it obvious that they are NOT slaves.

[Quiverful]

I was just looking at Donna Abraham's book The Way They Were(?don't have the book in front of me).She runs Abraham's Lady if you don't know her. She has a great section of CDV's of little boys in all types of clothing. One thing I found in common was that it didn't matter what the little boys were wearing, they all looked a bit rumpled!

We have 5 boys from 7 - 16 and I find that true all the time. We do mainly a working impression, usually in a mainstream living history section. Our boys are wearing some sort of sack coat with a waistcoat. I've been working on making them nicer clothing like a collar-less sack coat with a white shirt and little cravat. They just keep growing so fast that I hope to get at least a few events out of the outfits. This past year my 8 year old grew out of two pairs of trousers and ended up wearing rather short and tight pants for our last event in December. It looked period, though, since kids had to wear what they had towards the end of the war and our event was portraying 1864 at Christmas time.

Hope that helps,

[Lorna]

Yes, boys could wear trousers and knickers at 5 years old... but they could also still be wearing frocks. Quite often you will see a frock over top of a pair of short pants.

I would also highly recommend Donna's book as a great visual reference for children's clothing.