Figure 1.--I'm not sure what George is wearing here. It looks to be a smock which he wore with kneepants. I'm also not sure what color the smock was. The photograph was probablky taken about 1925. Notice thebelt. Thsat seems more common on tunics than smocks.

The boys when they were younger (3-6 years), wore blouses with big ruffled collars. There were several outfits with fancy blouses. When older they wore their blouses rather incongrously with a tie. With this outfit they wore white ankle socks and strap shoes. Another type of outfit worn when young were one-piece shorts suits with both romper puffed and regular pants. We also notice them wearing smocks. They also wore kneepants rather than short pants when young for official portraits. This shows that kneepants were still worn in the early 1920s, although rapidly being replaved by the more popular short pants. They usually wore white thre-quater length or ankle socks. I have not noted them in white kneesocks. The available images show black strap shoes. They may have worn colored strap shoes, probably red, for play.

Smocks

we notice ome photographs of the boys wearing smocks. I'm not sure what colors they were, but thy were light colors. I'm also not sure wht ages the boys wore smock, but the portraits I have seen show the boys at pre-school ages. We have few images of the boys wearing smocks. We believe that they may have worn them commonly for play, but did not normally wear them for formal portraits. We wonder if the fact that Princess Mary wore smocks as a child was a factor here (figure 1). we are mot sure if her brothers wore smocks as boys.

Rompers

We also note a few images of the boys wearing rompers. Like smocks these rompers appear to have been play garments, as least as close to casual clothing as the children seemed to have worn. I'm not sure how commonly they wore rompers. There are relatively few photographs of the boys in rompers. The ones we noticed appear to be rather plain play rompers although as far as we know, they were only worn for casual play.

Fancy Blouses

Thr boys when younger wore fancy blouses with large ruffled collars. I think there were also collars with Peter Pan collars. They were worn with neck ties. The boys also wore shoty pants, short white socks, and strap shoes with their fancy blouses.

Button-on Suits

We notice the boys wearing button-on outfits. These were colored outfits, although we unfortunately can not tell what the color was. They look to be mostly pastel colors. They had various collars including ruffled collars and Peter Pan collars. We notice one button-on outfit rhat looks like a one -piece garment. These outfits seem similar to the Oliver Twist suits worn by American boys. I'm not sure how common these suits were in Britsin.

White Socks

As younger boys they seen to be wearing white ankle or three-quarter socks.

Strap Shoes

We notice the boys wearing strap shoes with they were young. We note both single strap and "t" strap shoes. They seem to be black patent-leather shoes.

Created: October 20, 2003
Last updated: 7:14 PM 7/25/2008