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We are not sure about the hosiery worn with suits in the 18th century. The moden suit first appeared at this time and was worn with knee breeches. Boys at thed time wore small, cut down versions if their fathers' suits. For the affluent his men hite long stockings. For the less affluen this meant stockings in natural colors. At gthe turn of the 19h century, boys begn wearing skeleton suiys with long pants. Thus we do not know a great deal about the hosiery. The art work suggdests white hosiery, but we are not sure just how common this was or the length of the hose. Once photography appered (1840s) we begin to have extensive information on fashion. And this is about the same time, that shortened-length pants for boys began to appear, at least for very young boys (1850s). The general pattern we see with English suits is that boys wore long stockings in the 19th century as we see on the previous page. We do not see suits worn with bear legs to any extent in the 19th cntury. Light-colored long stockings were prvalent at mid-century (figure 1). Striped long stockings were popular (1870s) and toward the end of the century, dark colors prevailed (1880s-90s). After the turn-of-the 20h century we begin to see some bare knees--we think mosdtly turned doen long stockings. And we mostly see knee socks as long as shorts pants were prevalent through mid-century. Girls continued wearing long stovkings little longer than the boys. While we mostly see knee socks, we do see some ankle socks during the summer or even sandals without socks. After mid-century short pants nd knee sovks began to become less preavlent, but so did suits in general.
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