Figure 1.--The Spring 1941 Sears catalog offered long stockings for both boys and girls. This style was marketed for both boys and girls in sizes up to 10, but this should not be confused with chronological age. They were available in different grades the colors were black; dark, medium, and light tan; brownstone; and other neutarl colors and white. |
The Spring 1941 Sears catalog offered long stockings for both boys and girls. This style was marketed for both boys and girls in sizes up to 10, but this should not be confused with chronological age. They were available in different grades the colors were black; dark, medium, and light tan; brownstone; and other neutarl colors and white.
The Sears, Roebuck and Co., huge merchandising firm centered in Chicago was founded by Richard W. Sears (1863-1914) and A.C. Roebuck (1864-1948).
Sears had begun a career in mail-order business in Minnesota 1886. In Chicago he and Roebuck joined resources and formed a corporation in 1893 as a
mail-order business under title Sears, Roebuck and Company. In 1895 Julius Rosenwald (1862-1932) bought Roebuck's interest in firm and became president on
Sears's retirement 1908. A retail-store system was added 1925. The first foreign store added in Havana, Cuba during 1945 and becane te first expropriated store
in 1960. The Sears-Roebuck brought the production of industry to the fartherest corner of rural America, opening the cornucopia of the consumer age to rural
America. All the new things that were changing American life danced across their pages. Through it, a huge Chicago warehouse offers to modernize the farms and
small towns of the Midwest.
The Spring 1941 Sears catalog offered long stockings for both boys and girls. These stockings were marketed for both boys and girls in sizes up to 10 (figure 1). These sizes should not be confused with chronological age. They were available in different grades the colors were black; dark, medium, and light tan; brownstone; and other neutarl colors and white.
The sizes of full length stockings ranged up to 10. Readers should note that the numbers up to 10 are not age designations. They are stocking sizes keyed to
the sizes of children's shoes. The sizes of long stockings are based on shoe size (really of course foot size) although stocking and shoe sizes are not identiical. But they are closely related. Somewhere (I forget where--an earlier Sears ad, I
think) we have a scale of stocking sizes that show their relation to shoe
sizes. [HBC will eventually make a link here.] Stockings are always sold in relation to shoe sizes, not directly to age levels. In regard to stocking sizes, see the Montgomery Ward ad for stockings (1922). This sizing convention, however, is not true of the garter waists, which are indeed sized according to age. Note that the Sears ad for short-legged waist suits (1941) includes a waist suit with garter tabs for supporting long stockings in age sizes up to and including 16.
Thus size 10 would probably be for older
children depending on shoe size--on average about 13 or 14 years old although
the size of children's feet of course varies somewhat. Note that the hose
supporters advertized in the 1940s are sized by ages and go up to 12 and 14
years of age, so the larger sizes of long stockings must have been designed for
children of about 12 to 14. The boy in the picture looks as though he might be about 12 or 13. This is additional evidence that the stocking sizes were made in sizes for older children (up to early teens at least).
Navigate the Boys' Historical Clothing catalog/magazine pages:
[Return to the Main American mail order 1941 page]
[Main photo/publishing page]
[Store catalogs]
[Fashion magazines]
Navigate the Boys' Historical Clothing Web Site:
[Introduction]
[Activities]
[Biographies]
[Chronology]
[Clothing styles]
[Countries]
[Bibliographies]
[Contributions]
[FAQs]
[Glossary]
[Satellite sites]
[Tools]
[Boys' Clothing Home]
Navigate the Boys' Historical Clothing Web Site:
[Sailor suits]
[Sailor hats]
[Buster Brown suits]
[Eton suits]
[Rompers]
[Tunics]
[Smocks]
[Pinafores]