Based on a Boy Scouts of America uniform jacket from the textiles collection at University of Wisconsin-Madison, the extra large collar can be worn up, down, or buttoned half way, tight to the neck.

The entire body is cut in one panel, crossways across the grain of the fabric, and the sleeves are seamed along their tops to the shoulders. The patch pockets wrap to the sides.

             “Hi William. The Scout’s Uniform was given to us by the daughter of Herbert Wolff (1917-1999) (who asked for the gift to be made in his name). They lived in Deforest, WI and Herbert’s father emigrated from Germany. We currently have it as follows: Child’s jacket, 1917-1920, United States of America, Cotton, Gift of Herbert Wolff, Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection, 2022.15.001a. As this only arrived at the collection relatively recently, and our cataloging is in somewhat of a backlog, we have limited information and a low-quality reference photograph online. We have taken good photographs, but they are in the queue for editing (I have bumped them up, so we can have them accessible and useable in the next few months). I am a bit skeptical of the date as we have it, given that Herbert was born in 1917 so I think 1920s seems more likely. I couldn’t easily (as in, from Google…) find more information about the “Scouts Jr” badge, and I recall a label inside, which I don’t have a photograph for (I will pull it from the collection soon to take a look). But there is a bit more research to do here – and your work is a good prompt to do that! As far as I can tell, there were issued guidelines for uniforms at this time, but many scouts wore makeshift uniforms in this era, to make it affordable to participants – but your message makes me want to dig a little deeper into this object to see if we can find out a bit more. I’ll let you know what we discover, and when better images are available.”

Sophie Pitman, Research Director for the Nancy M. Bruce Center for Design and Material Culture