Trends may come and go, but the children’s look inspired by generations of royals (think Queen Victoria dressing her children in kilts at Balmoral; or little Charles and Anne in their double-breasted, velvet-collared Harris tweed coats) has run

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

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.

"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

Little Lord Fauntleroy was created by author Frances Hodgson Burnett in 1886, but it was the illustrations by Reginald Birch that sealed the Fauntleroy look. The velvet breeches and white lace collar worn by Cedric in the novel were also worn by the author’s two sons.

Resourceful parents, like Sex & The City star Sarah Jessica Parker, still employ this canny thrift. “My son James Wilkie only wears hand-me-downs,” she says, “I don’t think I have ever bought him clothes.”

“How we dress our children reflects how we see ourselves as parents,” wrote Jess Cartner-Morley exploring the Mini-Me phenomenon in The Guardian last year. Dressing a child in miniature versions of their own clothes is a way for adults to flag up