Figure 1.--Here we see a wonderful group of 1st or 2nd graders. They look like a school group, but they seem to be sitting on the front porch of a home. The photograph is undated, but the clothes rather firmly place it in the 1910s. We see boys in the front wearing heavy cardigans. And the girls are sporting great hairbows.

We see sweaters in numbers for the first time in the 1910s. Until this, American boys wore suits to school. We see boy in the 1910s beginning to replace suit jasckets with sweaters. They became a very common garment, both for school and for casual wear. We see this most clearly in school portraits becasuse these photographs were such a common feature of school life. This provided us a wonderful record of the popular fashion of the day. A wide variety of sweater styles gradually developing. We see two in the 1910s. A factor here is that the popularity of suits, especially for school declined. Suddenly we do see sweaters, quite a number of them. The first 1910s sweaters tended to be heavy bulky garments. We see boys sporting heavy cardigan sweaters, what we would call letterman sweaters today. They were often worn with ties, just like suit jasckets. We also see quite a number of even heavier roll neck sweaters. Sweaters in the 1910s seem more popular with the boys than the girls.

Created: 1:03 PM 2/6/2019
Last updated: 1:03 PM 2/6/2019