Figure 1.--Here we see two chums in 1941. Notice how the one boy has rolled down his stockings. It looks like a warm day which presumably why he rolled them down. His friend wears no hosiery at all. |
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We notice during the summer that boys might roll down their long stockings. Girls also did this, but it may have been less common. we also see this with kneesocks, although it is not always possible to tell which is which. This appears to have been a casual, warm weather phenonenon, but we do not know much about this. HBC has several references to rolling down long stockings. We
see German boys rolling down long stockings for seasonal reasons in the 1950s. A Norwegian boy reports that when mothers insisted on long stockings for their sons, "you could always roll them down when Mom was out of sight." We also have a photo of a German boy on a family outing (taken in the
1930s) in which the boy apparently has folded down his long stockings below the knee, apparently because of hot weather or the desire for greater informality.
A Canadian reader writes, "I remember having worn rubber bands instead of garter waists. Those latter were a real hassle. I remember how practical it was to pull up or pull down stockings depending on weather. Also we wore long stockings because it was forbiden to go to mass with bare knees, but it was easy to pull off long stockings for playing barefoot on the grass. By many aspects, it was more useful than wearing long pants or jeans as it is today."
A German reader tells us, "Not infrequently, we rolled our stockings down--especially on hot days. Here there were all kinfs of approaches. Mothers often had something to say about this. My mother wasn't to bothered, but other mothers were. Some rolled them down to just above the knee above the knee, in which case a short expanse of leg was intentionally left stocking-free and cool. Sometimes a boy would roll his stockings down below the knee like knee socks or even to the ankle. We referred to this situation as the original “basic escape garter" ( Rettungsringe ).
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