Figure 1.-- |
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Here we have some interesting information about childrens clothes in the 1920s. These personal reminisences are very helpful in understanding contemporary fashion trends and children's attitudes.
We note personal reminisence comes from Velma Hindorff Sierras about the clothes she and her brothers wore in the 1920s. She grew up in Fallbrook, California (near Los Angeles),
during the 1920s. She writes, "I would now like to tell about clothing that my brothers and I wore
when we were small [i.e., in grade school about 1922-25]. I wore long cotton black ribbed stockings, held up by a `pantywaist' with long garters. Of course, all girls wore dresses, with long sleeves, or the dread `guimpe'. This was a short blouse type garment with long sleeves, worn under a short sleeves dress, jumper or pinafore. If the boys wore short pants, they were buttoned onto a pantywaist with a blouse type shirt top over it. [The boys also wore long stockings with their short
pants.] Both my brothers fought against these, and hated them till they finally outgrew them. Fortunately they were only for `dress up' occasions."
The "pantywaist" was merely an alternative (but much hated) term for "underwaist" in the 1920s and 1930s. The Minneapolis Knitting Works, a manufacturer of children's underwear, used the term "panty waist" in an advertisement of 1930.
Lane Bryant sold underwaists for younger children during the 1930s,
also referring to them as "pantiewaists" in their advertisements.
We note two California boys are shown wearing long stockings and garters with short trousers in the later 1920s on an HBC page. They are probably also wearing pantywaists (or underwaists) as the necessary garment to
anchor their hose supporters. We note an interesting personal reminiscence about Tony and Peggy the "pantywaist"
worn by both boys and girls in the 1920s and 1930s. These garments were very widely worn, but the term "pantywaist" was actually not that common because it became such a derisive term.
Fallbrook Newspaper (2001.).
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