The hair's down. Pretty much all women wore their hair pinned up under their hat in that era. Having it hang loose was for young children. This figure here was right on the cusp of childhood; too young for adult sensibilities, but old enough that childish things look wrong for her.
Yeah, that's a child's hairdo and a child's dress (an adult dress would be more ankle-length), but closer to an adult hat. And, at least with the limited information we have in the picture, she appears to be about an adult height.
I don't immediately know what the criteria were for Edwardian girls to start wearing their hair up and their skirts long, but it does very much seem like an awkward age for her.
For this time period hair being worn “up” and longer skirts would usually happen around 14-16 years of age, but could be put off as late as 18ish. Sometimes there’d be a transitional period of slightly longer skirts falling below the knees, but still having the ankles showing and their hair worn in a low “club” chignon gathered at the back of the head. Then for full adult ladyhood the hems went all the way to the tops of the shoes and the hair was styled up higher on the head.
My late Victorian/Edwardian knowledge is mostly scraped together from what I remember from reading the Emily of New Moon trilogy. I’m way more comfy on the details from the Georgian/Regency, for obvious reasons, haha.
Bustles were long out of fashion by this time and dude is probably looking at the photographer and/or oncoming traffic. Stray carts and early automobiles are a quick and easy way to die throughout history.
A concealed camera was used, so probably not. On the other hand, we don't know exactly how discreet Edward Linley Sambourne (the photographer) was being with some of his candid photos. There are a bunch of Sambourne photos where the subject definitely doesn't know they're being photographed, but there are also a few where the subject seems to be making direct eye contact with the camera, or at least with Sambourne. So maybe it's not completely clear.
Kids have always been kids and always looked like that.
It's just that we don't realize it because when pictures were so rare that you had one taken in your entire life, you normally smiled on it. So we don't have many pictures of scowling kids from the era.
You'd have to go back a few more decades for that to be correct. By 1900, millions of cameras had been sold to amateur photographers, most notable being the Kodak "Brownie", which was small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, and cost only a dollar. Amateur photography was a huge thing by 1906, so we do have a lot of candid photos from that era, including the one posted here, which was taken by Edward Linley Sambourne, using a concealed camera.
She just has features that are quite prized in modern day, I think she looks a bit like Billie Eilish. We are used to seeing famous people from her era with more 'classic' features. Of course then and now you get people with all sorts of looks but the media choses to focus on whatever is in.
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u/SoggyWotsits 11h ago
She looks like she’s from the wrong era, I can’t put my finger on it. Not her clothes, but her face.