Friday, October 5, 2012

Tin Types #2 - Men's Fashion

The little tin types tells us a lot about what men were wearing circa 1860-1890. However you won't see many of these fashions, including the hats, in sources that document the fashion of the time.  One of the reasons is that  many of these men lived in small towns and rural areas, where their immigrant culture and traditions may have played a larger role in their clothing choice than the prevailing fashion. Although I don't know where all of these photos were taken, the few that are labeled are from upstate New York and Pennsylvania. It's likely that most of these are also from that area.

I am not an expert on men's hats, so if any of you have ideas about these please let me know.  The one on the right in the back row looks Tirolean to me. How about the one on the very left? Eastern European? In any case, it's a great variety of hat styles. These guys were probably at a county fair and had their picture taken by a traveling photographer with a very plain background and grass underfoot.



The clothing in the next three photos looks Bavarian or Swiss to me, especially the cut of the jackets.




While these guys look very western, I'm guessing they were actually Pennsylvania farmers.


Here are a few more fellows for our fashion line up.



11 comments:

  1. A few days ago, I was in my local photo supply store. (I still shoot and process film.) They had a do it yourself tin type kit on the shelf. A bit expensive, so I passed, but it was nice to know that archaic photography survives.

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  2. Too bad the kits are expensive, because it would be fun to produce some modern tin types.

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  3. Fashion has never been part of my interests, but you always manage to make boring things interesting. I was immediately drawn to the various background/props shown in the photos. I love the "fence" made from branches (in the third photo).

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  4. Great photos/tin types, Christine. I have a photo of three ancestors wearing hats exactly like the man on the right in the last photo. The photo I have was taken in 1903 in Stoneboro, Pennsylvania. The men wearing the hats were born in England but came to the U.S. at a very young age and are middle-aged in the photo. There are 10 men, 3 generations, and 7 or 8 styles of hats! It's interesting that I never really looked at the hats in that photo until looking at the hats in this post.

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  5. A fine group of images showing a range of fashions. The variety of hats in the first shot really is pretty amazing, as folks usually tend to follow whatever the current trend is. Some of the gents look a bit rough though, I'm sure the trio in the last image would have no problem with extracting my wallet and then beating me to a pulp...

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  6. Now I want to have a hat. Maybe if I start wearing them they will come back into fashion.

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  7. They are in fashion -- hipster hats are on just about every hipster head here in SF.

    Cool old tin types, Christine.

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  8. I take my hat off to you with this parade of men's headgear.

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  9. Hi Christine,
    Thank you for stopping by my blog the other day. And thank you for all of your kind words, it was really great to hear from you!!!
    I LOVE old tin types, and I really love seeing these from your collection. Please show us more!
    Christine

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  10. Yea! tintypes . . . cool stuff Christine. Thanks for sharing these.

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  11. wow, the evolution of men's hats. Great assortment. The era of the small brim was not one I was familiar with.

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