Figure 1.--Before and after World War II, Italian boys commonly wore short pants suits. The style of the jackets and pants varied over time. Long pants suits began to become more common in the 1960s.

We have noted Italian boys wearing all the different types of suits comonly worn in Europe. We note the barious jacket styles including collar-buttoning jackets, cut-away jackets, lapel jackets and others. We ee vests n the 19th century. They were less common in the 20th century. We see boys wearing the different types of pabts with suits, knee pants, knickers, short pants, and long pants. The popularity of these types of suits have varied widely over time as have the age conventions associated with these different types of suits. We do not yet have much infomation on jackets. We see cut-away jackets in the 19th century. A good example of a cit-away jacket, in his case a vested outfit, is a Palermo boy in the 1870s. It is a longer cut than we usually see with cut-away jackets. Long pants suits wetre common in the 19th century until knee pants began to appear after mid-century. Boys wore both stright knee pants and bloomer knickers. Older boys wore long pants. There were not only age conventions, but also social class conventions. Poor boys more commonly wore long pants, in part because they wore thewir father's or older brother's hand me downs. After World War I, short pants became increasingly common. Most boys wore short pants suits and older boys wore knicker suits. Long pants suits were also worn. After World War II, we begin to see modtly single-breasted jackets. Short pants suits were also common, but gradually by the 1960s, long pants suits began to become more common.

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Created: June 2, 2004
Last updated: 5:31 AM 6/13/2018