ONCE UPON A TIME, children’s clothes were made with wide seams and carefully positioned darts, so that nimble-fingered sewers could ensure extended wear in years to come, with a nifty stitch here and a deft tuck there. Thrift is back in vogue, so it

and run. Parents still swoon over “le style Anglais”, maybe because it makes them look “un peu jet set” and like the kind of family who might have a Norland nanny at home.

Dressing-up clothes took off in the 19th century and are still adored by children, parents and educators everywhere, especially because it is a sure-fire way to spark creativity and encourage imagination through role play. The average dressing

The 20th century was a revolution in children’s dress. Proper childrenswear, such as the all-in-one skeleton suit for boys, and uncorseted empire lines for girls, allowed, at long last, the wearer to actually move.

You may well think pink is for girls and blue is for boys but historically, more often than not, the opposite was true. Instead, boys wore pink because of its associations with the ‘power’ colour red, whilst girls were more likely to be clad in ‘Virgin Mary’ blue.

Dressing siblings in matching outfits gives the family a neat look – just look at the Beckham boys. But, according to psychologists, dressing siblings identically might not be the best thing for their developing identities. So think before following

. Children started wearing jeans in the Fifties, but the look really took off in the Seventies with the bell bottoms and skinny-jean-and-jacket combo that was the denim suit. Today, jeans are a staple in the wardrobe of every child and even newborns wear

The trend for all things naval kicked off when the artist Franz Winterhalter painted the four-year-old Prince Albert Edward in a white sailor suit for a Channel Islands’ cruise in 1846. By the 1870s, both boys and girls were sporting the look.

. Children started wearing jeans in the Fifties, but the look really took off in the Seventies with the bell bottoms and skinny-jean-and-jacket combo that was the denim suit. Today, jeans are a staple in the wardrobe of every child and even newborns wear

"It is impossible to overemphasise the role played by knitted garments in the democratisation of children’s clothes,” says Noreen Marshall, author of Dictionary Of Children’s Clothes. Knitwear became popular after zoologist Dr Gustav Jäger wrote in 1850 that people might live hea...