Figure 1.-- This is a detail from a secondary school in the Zurich canton--this one from a school in the city of Zurich itself. The photograph was taken March 24, 1930. The boy shown here wears a dark double-breasted short trousers suit with a white shirt and open collar. The white collar doesn't seem to have points, so I'm not sure whether it is a Schiller collar or not. He wears black long stockings with a Strapsleibchen and black low-cut shoes. This seems a bit formal for school wear, but perhaps his mother insisted that he dress up for the class photo.

Presumably Swiss boys in the early 19th century wore skeleton suits like boys in other European countries. Swiss boys by the mid-19th century were wearing suits with more modern styling and long pants. We see boys wearing cut-away jackets in the 1860s and 70s. Older boys wore jackets with lapels. Gradually by the 1870s, kneepants suits had become more common for boys. They were worn with long over the knee stockings. I'm not sure when knicker suits began to be worn. Short pants suits with modern styling appeared in the 1910s and were wiely worn by the 1920s. They were worn with knee socks, but many boys wore long above the knee stockings with them during the winter. Other boys wore knickers. Gradually suits became less commonly worn and were much less common by the 1940s. Knicker suits isappeared in the 1950s and short pants suits became much less common in the 1960s. Today modern Swiss boys, as other European boys, do not commonly dress up, but when they do, they normally wear a single breasted, long pants suits.

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Created: 8:20 AM 3/8/2010
Last updated: 8:20 AM 3/8/2010