Figure 1.--These boys are coming home from school in 1934 somewhere in the New York suburbs. They all wear knickers, but one boy wears knee socks and the other two ankle socks. The boys look to be about 9 years old.

The American hosiery industry truly began to flourish in the 20th century. Cotton, wool, and combinations of these fabrics in vivid colors and patterns caught the fashionable man's fancy. It was also during this period that sports hose in knitted wool, mixtures of wool and silk, and wool and cotton gained in popularity. We note boys mostly wearing knee socks with knickers. We also see short socks. Long stockings were also worn during the winter. Long stockings were declining in populrity, but quite a number of younger boys wore them. Tan colors had largely replaced black stockings, except for formal occassions. And older children might wear long stockings for formal occassions. We seen many boys wearing knee socks with knickers. During the summer and for school we note boys beginning to wear ankle socks with knickers. This is something we rarely see in the 1920s. A factor here may have been long pants. Knickers were widely worn in the 1930s, but as the decade progressed we see more and more boys wearing long pants. We are not sure what kind of hosiery ws worn with long pants, but suspect it ws mostly ankle socks. Some boys wore short pants, but not nearly as commonly as in Europe. We note various types of hosiery woen with shorts, here seasonality, age, and usage were all factors. We mostly notice oys wearing shorts with ankle socks. Younger boys might wear long stockings with shorts. Older boys might wear knee socks with shorts, but often when dressing up. By the end of the decade, both knee socks and long stockings were cleaarly became much less common for American boys.

Created: 9:02 PM 4/11/2008
Last updated: 2:29 AM 6/26/2008