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Child's sun bonnet

Date1930s

Object number00039510

NameBonnet

MediumCotton

Dimensions380 x 250 mm, 0.2 lb. (0.08 kg)

ClassificationsClothing and personal items

Credit LineANMM Collection

Terms

bonnets (hats)

DescriptionThis white cotton child's bonnet is decorated with a fine broderie anglaise trim. Worn in the late nineteenth century, it has a gathered crown with a piping embellishment and shaping darts at the sides of the peak.HistoryIn the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Australian children's clothing became less restrictive. Lighter fabrics, which were more suited to the hot antipodean climate, began to be used in preference to the heavier English velvets and flannels that had been so popular previously. Short sleeves began to be seen on girl's dresses, with frills and deep embroidered hemlines, broderie anglaise detailing, cape collars or yokes used for decoration. A new wardrobe for a new century. This hat was purchased from the collection of Sophie Van Rood. Born in England, Van Rood established a couture salon in Knightsbridge, London in the mid-1930s. In 1964 she and her family migrated to Adelaide where, with her business partner Tom Spender, she set up The Banana Room emporium in 1974. In 1967 she began acquiring her personal collection of clothing, dating from the Victorian era through to the 1940s. This collection became the basis for The Banana Room, and items were used as a resource by celebrities and in film and television productions. The auctioned collection was the combined trading stock of The Banana Room and her personal collection, including items dating fromthe 1850s to the 1980s. Sourced mostly in Adelaide from 1967 until the late 1990s, most of the collection was made in Australia by tailors and dressmakers based in Adelaide, Sydney or Melbourne. There are also European-made items.SignificanceThis is a rare surviving example of a late Victorian child's bonnet. This was distinctive period in the development of children's clothing as it became less restrictive and more practical.
Girls in particular were beginning to longer imitate adult fashion and the rise of the industrial revolution meant a greater use of more practical fabrics, better suited to the rigours of childhood.