I'm working on a careful description and analysis of the children's styles fro the Sears catalogs, and decided to get reactions from my readers. These images (211 of them!!!) are arranged in chronological order, by year and then season (Spring-Summer, then Fall-Winter). You can view them as a slide show and add comments here or on Flickr. 
What do you see? (patterns, trends, surprises, memories) 

Here’s what I detect in the pages of the Sears catalogs from 1962 to 1979:

Consistent rules:

• dressier clothes are more gendered
  
• girls looking boyish=ok
  

Fading rules:

• babies are not toddlers are not children (toddler images to come)
  
• pants are for casual wear only, for girls
  
• flowers are ok for all babies
  

We were halfway through the massive undertaking of inventorying and weeding out our costume collection, and had gotten as far as the cabinet of dainty white baby things. Other institutions no doubt have them, too – long white dresses, short white dresses, petticoats of various descriptions. With luck, they are all well documented by the donors. We were not lucky. We were confronted with a cabinet full of infants’ clothing of uncertain origin, uncertain date, uncertain purpose and an uncertain role in our collection.

            The secondary sources on children’s clothing really do not go into enough detail on infants’ clothing to be helpful. So we decided to delve into the most promising form of primary literature on the subject: Sears, Roebuck mail-order catalogs. Sears catalogs are by no means the only source – mothers’ manuals and women’s magazines often contained advice on outfitting babies. But Sears catalogs did offer the greatest amount of detailed information, including materials and prices, as well as illustrations of every garment. This guide presents the results of that research, which hopefully will provide some guidance to others in the same predicament.