Are those breeks actually made out of moleskin, as in the skin of moles? I once bought this stuff that was called moleskin but it wasn't made out of mole's skin, it was kind of felty stuff that was sticky on one side and you stuck it on you to protect from blisters.

You would call it a dressing gown or a bed jacket, I think you must be talking about what I would call a bathrobe, and who calls it a housecoat?

And on the topic of britches, I think you were supposed to wear them just above the knee, because I heard it in a movie. And you know how those things are always accurate. In the musical The Music Man while listing a bunch of bad things children might be doing, he says "When your son leaves the house, does he rebuckle his knickerbockers BELOW the knee?" And I assume knickerbockers is the same thing as britches. And that movie is based around 1930s, plus or minus 20 years.

I also read a book based in a similar time period where getting to wear long pants was a sign of growing up. Little boys all wore pants that went down to the knee, and at some point you were grown up and you got to wear long pants. I've noticed that a lot of school uniforms very little boys wear shorts while older ones wear long pants, and I've been wondering if that is a remnant of that tradition.

And speaking of boys and girls wearing dresses and long hair, there is this picture of my grandfather when he was really little, and he's just adorable in a frilly dress with curly ringlet hair. It's hard enough to tell the gender of children at that age as it is!