Skeleton suit

A skeleton suit was an outfit of clothing for small boys, popular from about 1790 to the late 1820s, after which it increasingly lost favor with the advent of trousers.

It consisted of a tight short- or long-sleeved coat or jacket buttoned to a pair of high-waisted trousers.

Previously (and subsequently) young boys wore dresses until they were breeched, or put into trousers.

Charles Dickens describes a skeleton suit as "one of those straight blue cloth cases in which small boys used to be confined, before belts and tunics had come in, and old notions had gone out: an ingenious contrivance for displaying the full symmetry of a boy's figure, by fastening him into a very tight jacket, with an ornamental row of buttons over each shoulder, and then buttoning his trousers over it, so as to give his legs the appearance of being hooked on, just under the armpits" (Sketches by Boz, 1836).

Skeleton suits are one of the children's nostalgic Regency fashions typical of the illustrations of Kate Greenaway.