|
English school children commonly wore long stockings with knee pants in the late-19th century. We see boys at private schools wearing knee socks with knickers. We do know they many boys wore knickers and knee socks to school from photogrphic portraits, but this primaily reflected outfits to privte chools. We think knee pants and long stockings were more commmon at state primary schools. The idea was to cover up the legs. We rarely see bare knees in the 19th century. This began to change after the turn-of-the 20th century. We see some boys beginning to turn down long stockings in the 1900s ans by the 1910s knee socks ere breing worn. Afrer World War I in the 1920s, short pants and knee socks became standard. We still see a few boys wearing long stockings, but not many. Long stockings persisted with girls a little longer. For boys, long stockings had basically disppeared by the 1930s. We do not yet have much information on long stockings in England, but the photogrphic record suggests that boys were not wearing then by the 30s. Mostly we see knee socks at school. Long stockings do not seem to be nearly as common as in many other countries such as America or Germany. We notice girls at quite a number of schools wearing long stockings before World War II, mostly conservative hirls schools with uniforms.
.
Navigate the Boys' Historical Clothing Web Site:
[Return to Main English school uniform hosiery page]
[Introduction]
[Activities]
[Biographies]
[Chronology]
[Cloth and textiles]
[Clothing styles]
[Countries]
[Topics]
[Bibliographies]
[Contributions]
[FAQs]
[Glossaries]
[Images]
[Links]
[Registration]
[Tools]
[Boys' Clothing Home]
