Childhood costumes in preparation for later life
More digging through my father’s childhood photographs have revealed that his parents regularly bought him costumes as was the fasion at the time. They dressed him up as a sailor, a cowboy, etc. But what I found interesting is that they actually had a lawyer’s robe tailor made for him. As the son of a lawyer, and the nephew of a lawyer, clearly, it seemed that he didn’t have much of a choice regarding his future career. However, what I find interesting is that his parents saw fit to commission a lawyers robe for a child of about four years of age, together with a fur trim and the emblem of the Egyptian flag in brass on the sash: the crescent and three stars. Then, they popped a tarboush on his head, hired a photographer and made him pose with a scroll. I found my grandfather’s lawyer’s robe but I don’t know what happened to my father’s replica.
These pictures must have been taken around 1953, a year or so after the fall of the Egyptian monarchy. The fact that the sash on his miniature robe still bears the cresecent, a symbol of the monarchy and of the Ottoman empire, is not insignificant, in my opinion. Was this is a deliberate political statement of sorts? or was it simply that lawyer robes had not yet changed despite the regime changing and therefore the miniature costume simply copied what older lawyers wore ? Unfortunately, the ones who could answer that question have long since vacated our premises and taken the answers with them.
Below I will share a few of the pictures of this shoot individually with a short explanation and the rest I will just put in a Gallery format.
The posed photograph
This seems to be the most “official” looking one of the lot. The other photos clearly demonstrate the failed attempt to make a four year old pose with any sense of decorum. An ambitious and rather useless endeavour if there ever was one.
Running away…
In this picture, all decorum is dropped and you see a little boy attempting to resume more age appropriate activities.
My father with his grandmother. Some humor finally!
Cowboy costume
For the sake of comparison, my father in a cowboy costume, clearly bought prêt à proter and having fun at a birthday party as it appears from the other photographs of this series which I didn’t add to this post.
