Figure 1.-- Sears in its Fall and Winter 1930 catalog offered this short pants suit. The pants were described as an English-style shorts. Iam not sure precisely why that was. |
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We noticed quite a range of suits for boys in the 1930s, including short pants, knicketrs, and long p[ants suits. The Butlers Brothers wholesale company in its 1930-31 catalog offered a range of boys' suits, both knickers and long pants suits. There were no short pants suits shown. I'm not sure if this was beacuse it was winter or because they were less popular. Sears catalogs also offered many knickers both as individual pants and as suits. The suits were sized by age--from 7 to 17 years. Some boys wore long trousers earlier than 17, but by 18 nearly all boys had switched to longies. There were also short pants suits for younger boys.
know nothing about Butler Brothers other than they were a New Tork retailer marketuing boys' clothes. I have two pages from what may be a large catalog. One page shows boys' short pants, knickerm and kneepants suits. The other page showed long pants play suits.
Sears in its Spring and Summer catalog offered short pants, knickers, and long pants suits. From looking through the catalog, we observe that in 1930 both short pants suits and long pants suits take a back seat to knickers suits. There is not a lot of selection of short pants suits, and the ones that do appear are for younger
boys (up until about 9 years of age) There are a fair number of shorts outfits for play, but short pants suits were considered, I think, more European, especially more English, than American. Some of the shorts are called "English shorts". The long pants suits were made for younger teenagers, but the appeal seems to be mainly to boys who are in their upper teens--17-19 years.
There were several suits in the Sears Fall and Winter catalog. We have some limited informatiion on a few of them. We notice both 2-piece and 3-piece (vest) short pants suits for younger boys. We do not yet have any information about suits for older boys..
Rogers, Peet was a toney men's and boys' clothier in New York city since 1874. Their clothing had aestinctive British look, which appealed to many well-to-do Americans at the time. An advertisement shows some of their offerings. A library has dated it 1930, but this may be more of an estimate than a definitive date. They often depicted British-styled short pants suits in their advertising, although knickers were more common in America.
We begn to see boys wearing knee socks with knickers instead of long stocking in the late-1920s. Knee socks, often done in bright patterns were commonly worn with knicker in the 1930s. We also see the closures changing. Knicker in the 1910s and 20s had button closures. We see knickers commonly beuing done with an elasticized knee cuff in the 1930s. One manufactured combined the button and elasticized knee cuff closure. Cufrite knickers were offered with Majectic suits. The manufacturr was the Lauer Manufacturing Company. he knickers featured a distinctive knitted cuff which the comapny tells us was "acclaimed by many of America's leading stores as the most practical 'knitted cuff' knicker." We note an ad in the a 1930 Boybuyer fearure this cuff on the Majectic suits.
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