All at sea: the sailor suit

The tunics Dickens refers to, which look to us like full-skirted short dresses, continued to be worn by boys between the ages of three and seven until the 1860s, when they began to be replaced by various combinations of jacket and pants - and also, increasingly, by the sailor suit. This costume, first introduced at the end of the eighteenth century in schools that trained boys for the Navy, soon began to be seen on children of all ages and both sexes. (The girls' version, of course, was made with a skirt instead of shorts or knickers.)

Although sailor suits were soon common wear for children in both America and continental Europe, their greatest vogue was in Britain. Though most popular on holidays and at the seaside, they were by no means limited to such scenes. Indeed, in the early twentieth century, the sailor suit or sailor blouse and skirt was almost the standard everyday costume for middle-class boys and girls - as can be seen in the illustrations to the books of con­temporary juvenile authors. In city and country, at home and abroad, in navy blue for warmth and wear or in white for sum­mer and parties, the children of Britain proclaimed that she ruled the waves. It was not until after World War II, when Britannia had waived the rule and naval strength counted for less on the international scene, that the sailor suit began to lose its popularity. At a summer camp for girls I attended in 1940-41, our Sunday dress-up uniform was a white middy blouse and skirt with a red-silk neckerchief. In this costume, every weekend, we sat on the porch of the main building and sang patriotic songs, often with a seagoing theme: "Anchors Aweigh" and "Sailing, Sailing" were favorites. As Paul Goodman asks after a description of similar ceremonies at his summer camp, "Where were we all going to, sitting down?"

When worn by children, who had reached adolescence, nauti­cal costume had additional, sometimes contradictory meanings. It could convey a rugged heartiness, as in Arthur Ransome's stories about juvenile sailors; or it could suggest a pampered, overcivilized beauty such as that of fourteen-year-old Tadzio in Thomas Mann's Death in Venice, whose "English sailor suit" gave him “a spoilt, exquisite air”.