You Had A Question?

Emma asked:

this is king Louis XV as a babe, Why is he wearing a dress?

This is a cool question so I will answer it in a blog post because there's a lot to say. 

The breeching of boys didn't become a thing until after 1540 because before then, everyone wore a skirt.

Remember this?

 Everyone wore a chiton or tunic up until this point and so kids did too, since children were dressed in clothing which was just a miniature version of adult wear.  But, right around the time codpieces were invented, men began to wear pants.   All children wore long long dresses until they could walk.

 

This is Charles II in his baby clothes before he was "shortcoated".  (The term for what male children wore was "coats".) When a child became a toddler and started trying to walk, the skirts of the gown/coat got shorter and sometimes the dress had leading strings on it.  And, no, there is no difference between a gown and a coat except for the name.   It's pretty much the same difference between the words skirt and kilt.

Anyway, boys wore coats until they reached an age when they were old enough to be considered young men, sometime between three and eight years old.  This was an important rite of passage and it meant that the father now had a lot more involvement in the boys life.  Generally it was after the boy was potty trained and able to negotiate the stupidly complicated fastenings on his pants, but it was also when they felt the boy had attained the "age of reason" which is about seven or eight years old.

But, before then, it's really hard to tell which is a boy and which is a girl in old paintings.  Generally, boys wore darker colors and didn't wear pearl necklaces (if they have a necklace, it's coral because those were considered the best substance for teething.  Amber was popular in Eastern Europe [it also is much more common in Russia] which is why babies these days all have amber necklaces. [For reals, there are two at the school where I work.]  However, since the whole point of these coral/amber necklaces is for the children to chew on them, the ones the hippie moms put on kids which are snug to the neck [to reduce the chance of strangulation] I guess aid teething by magic.)

This is a painting of the children of Charles I.  The next king of England, Charles II is in the center in the orange pants.  His brother James, who became James II when Charles died without an heir, is second on the left in the orange dress.  He is wearing a dark color and isn't wearing pearls so he's totally a boy.  

Anyway, dressing boys in skirts continued to be a thing up until the end of the World War I, though boys  began to wear pants earlier and earlier until it was a thing done when he was potty trained, at around age three or four.  When he got his knickerbockers for the first time, it was such an important occasion that he also got to take a picture with his dad.

Looks like a lot of fun.

So why did all children wear dresses? Well, I think the quickest answer is the word "diaper."  If you have ever interacted with children you might have noticed this

is where diapers have the most problem, design wise.  Add in the complete lack of waterproof fabrics and you can understand why a skirt is probably the best design if you don't want Junior making a mess on everything.

So, that's why boys rocked dresses/coats and why, to us, Louis XV looks like a pretty little girl.

"Also, it's because his mom wouldn't let him play with swords and dogs like my mom"