Boys' Dress

This painting of a child with a hobby horse dates from 1836. And despite the elaborate full-skirted dress trimmed with ribbons, the child is not a girl, but a boy - Alfred Fuller, aged four.

In Western European countries until about 1920 the youngest boys wore dresses until they were 'breeched' (given their first outfit which included breeches or trousers). This happened at an age between about four and eight years old, varying with different eras and families. A formal ceremony might take place to mark this progress from babyhood to boyhood, and sometimes a first haircut was also included. Up to the end of the 18th century, those parents who could afford it might also give their son a child-sized sword, or at least a toy weapon as a token of the real one he would have as an adult.  

One of the hardest of childhood customs to understand is why were little boys given dresses to wear. Wasn't it difficult for them to wear clothes that made them look like girls?

The origin of the custom may be simply that before about 1550, both sexes and all ages wore tunics and gowns of some sort, and young children's fashions are often slow to change. Other ideas have been put forward. The youngest children were associated with their mothers, and cared for by women rather than men, and so perhaps it was appropriate for them all to wear skirts, whether they were boys or girls. All children of this age were considered more or less as babies and so wore the same type of garments. It would be easier to change nappies if the child wore skirts rather than trousers. In fact the age for breeching suggests that making it easier for young boys to urinate is perhaps the most likely explanation. This would be especially true when breeches or trousers had complicated fastenings which took a long time to undo, as they did in the 16th century, for example.

Little boys would not have felt conspicuous in their dresses because they were the normal thing to wear, although they undoubtedly looked forward to getting their first trousers and being thought of as more grown up. And people in the past didn't think that putting dresses on boys was treating them as girls, just as today we don't consider that putting girls in trousers is treating them as boys.

Adults and other children would also have been able to distinguish boys from girls quite easily: they knew how to read the clues. In 1836, if Alfred Fuller had been a girl, he would probably have had long hair dressed in ringlets and worn a white dress in a more modest style with less flamboyant sleeves. And a whip and a hobby horse would be most unusual toys for a girl. Boys' dresses were often made in brighter or darker colours than those for girls, in plainer or stronger fabrics. They might have chunky belts and trimmings and large metallic buttons which were not typical of girls' dresses. They also tended to be more tailored in appearance, and sometimes had features associated only with boys' clothing, such as the opening down the front of the skirt which had been fashionable in the 1810s and 1820s.

From the 1920s onward, little boys wore trousers of some sort. There was a practical reason why this was easier to achieve: new fabrics which were easier to wash and iron, and new detergents which cleaned the clothes more easily. But it was also true that many traditional ideas changed in the aftermath of the Second World War, for both children and adults. 'Modern' was the key word for the way of life most people wanted: their clothing, and their children's clothing, was one of the most visible expressions of that quality.