Fashion Clues in Men's Clothing

It's pretty exciting to own an ancestor photo from long ago. We may know it is a photo of Great-Grandfather Jacob, but how can we figure out when it was taken? We have an idea when Jacob was born but we can't date the photograph based on his year of birth. Below are some ways to identify approximate dates of antique photos through fashion clues in men's clothing.

There were four types of coats worn in in the Civil War period:

1. Men generally wore a frock coat, their equivalent of today’s casual suit jacket. It was cut straight across at the bottom.
2. The tail coat (where the back of the jacket was longer than the front) was only worn for formal occassions.
3. The cutaway coat was similar to the frock coat except the front was cut so that it flared back instead of being cut straight across. ​
4.The loose fitting sack coat was popular during this period

Most shirt collars were of the “turn down” variety rather than the earlier stand-up type

Civil War Era Frock Coat

Civil War Era Sack Coat

Vests or Shirtcoats were often worn. They could be almost any style and material but in general were cut straight across at the bottom. They had a shawl or notched collar Trousers or pants were cut high on the waist and had button fronts as zippers were not in use at this time. Suspenders were usually worn to hold the trousers up.  ​

You can help me save more of these beautiful photographs of ancestors with this PayPal.Me/OliveTreeGenealogy  link.  Please consider donating a small amount for the Lost Faces Project. ​

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All photographs images © 2010-2018 Lorine McGinnis Schulze. Some rights reserved. The photographs may be saved for your personal use but they may not be published or reproduced elsewhere, either online or off, without my written permission.