Hanging above the fireplace in the Great Hall is a grand portrait showing three young children, the subjects appear to be two boys and a girl. The two older children wear formal black suits complete with ties, and a top hat sits beside them. The younger child wears a drastically different outfit: a white puff sleeve dress, a floppy hat, both with blue sashes, stockings, and a coral necklace. The child’s rosy cheeks and large bow on their hat add to the seemingly feminine look. One might assume it depicts two of the three sons and the Coe’s only daughter, Natalie. However, the work actually shows just the Coe’s sons, having been painted by Wilhelm Funk before Natalie’s birth in 1910.
Mai Coe holding William Coe as an infant, likely in a christening gown,1901.
Why were Henry’s clothes so different from his older brothers? The answer lies in the history of fashion and gender norms in the United States. Until the turn of the twentieth century, boys and girls typically wore the same clothing from infancy to early childhood. Long, loose frocks, often white, were their primary attire until they started walking and began to wear skirts and bloomers.[1] Children typically had long hair at this point, as well.[2] This style can be seen in historical figures such as Franklin Deleno Roosevelt.[3]
Franklin Deleno Roosevelt aged 3, 1884. Courtesy FDR Presidential Library and Museum.
To modern eyes, they appear to be young girls. A photo of Henry in this attire even confused a family member: a handwritten note on the reverse of the photo below reveals that someone believed the young child in the dress to be Natalie. The crossed-out text reads: “Bob (Robert Coe), look through a magnifier and see if this photo isn’t exactly like Bobbie when he was 3 or 4 years old. Isn’t Natalie adorable? I always loved her looks—a beautiful face. Signed, M.” Someone later added, “This is Henry.”
Henry Coe, circa 1911 and reverse of the photograph inscribed.
However, as toddlers grew into childhood, boys adopted a style that would differentiate them from girls: pants, or breeches. The term “breeching” refers to the point in which young boys began wearing breeches rather than the dresses and skirts of their childhood.[4] Occurring roughly at age five, this transition marked their entrance into “the male sphere” and departure from the women’s world that they had previously existed in.[5] This tradition is long, with references to ‘breeching’ scattered in many novels, baby books, and more from the 18th and 19th centuries, such as Little Lord Fauntleroy by Frances Hogdson Burnett. It points to gender roles of the period: while young girls continued to wear dresses and skirts their entire lives, young boys had an identifiable way of showing their transition into young men and the freedom that came with it.[6] Girls were able to wear pants in select situations, seen in Natalie Coe’s portrait in her riding gear, but in general the clothing worn by young girls and boys after age 5 reflected the gender roles they were expected to follow.
Portrait of Natalie Mai Coe by David Anthony Tauszky, 1916.
After ‘breeching,’ boys also often wore “costume styles.”[7] These outfits were mock formal attire, such as miliary uniforms or other professional clothing. The mock adult clothing furthered the gender roles; by dressing as miniature adults, boys past breeching age were prepared to enter the adult male sphere. The three Coe sons exemplify the pre- and post-‘breeching’ styles of the early 20th century.
William and Robert Coe in matching sailor uniforms, circa 1907.
As the century progressed, children’s clothing continued to diverge. The rise of department stores allowed ready-to-wear clothing to be more widely available, and the color and style of dress became more disparate. The colors pink and blue were largely interchangeable between boys and girls at the time of this portrait and often depended simply on which color looked best on the child. However, this slowly changed as well for a variety of reasons, the primary being the continued desire to differentiate boys and girls and their respective gender roles.[8] While today the Coe’s outfits appear out of the ordinary, they closely followed the fashion of the time.
By Betsey Donham, Bard Graduate Center, Collections and Archival Intern, Summer 2026.
All photos from Planting Fields Foundation Archives unless otherwise noted.
Header photo: “Coe Children” by Wilhelm Funk, 1909
[1]Chantel Lavoie, “Tristram Shandy, Boyhood, and Breeching,” Eighteenth-Century Fiction 28, no. 1 (Fall 2015), 88.
[2] Jo B. Paoletti, “Clothing and Gender in America: Children’s Fashions, 1890-1920,” Signs 13, no. 1 (1987): 137.
[3]Meilan Solly, “Unraveling the Colorful History of Why Girls Wear Pink and Boys Wear Blue,” April 23, 2025, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/unraveling-the-colorful-history-of-why-girls-wear-pink-and-boys-wear-blue-1370097/.
[4] Lavoie, 95.
[5] Pike, 112.
[6] Lavoie, 97.
[7] Paoletti, “Clothing and Gender in America: Children’s Fashions, 1890-1920,” 140.
[8] Paoletti, Jo B. “Pink and Blue: Telling the Boys from the Girls in America.” Indiana University Press (2012), 93.