Figure 1.--The every day uniform at this prep school was grey cordyroy jackets, worn wih grey shirts, blue ties, and grey kneesocks. Note the sheen and texture of the material. A HBC reader writes, "The outfit worn by the boys here is similar to one I woew as a boy, although not as a school uniform. The outfits here are lighter than the one I wore. As a personal observation, I regard his kind of suit as being particularly smart when new and by the look of the suits shown here, they look as though they have had more than one wash, yet they have retained their sheen."

The only cord garments worn as school uniform known to HBC are trousers and jackets. The most common corduroy garment has been short trousers, although some schools also had corduroy long trousers. A few scholls had matching cord jackets, sometimes called lumber jsckets. Some schools used the jackets as the principal school outfit while other schools had blazers worn with grey short or long trousers in addition to the cord jackets. We do not know of any other corduroy school uniform garments,

Trousers

The most common use was in school short pants. Hard wearing cord shorts were often worn as play clothes by English boys and thus were a natural choice as part of a school uniform. Several private schools adopted them as the school uniform I believe beginning in the 1940s, but this needs to be confirmed. Some schools adopted cord shorts as part of an every day uniform and had the boys dress up in flannel or Terryln shorts for speecial occasions. Other schools used the cords dresswear as well. Cord long pants were also worn at schools, but not as commonly as the cord shorts. One school in Lomdon gibes the boys the option of wearing cord shorts or knickers (referred to as knickerbockers in England). The cord pants came in a range of colors. Most common were grey or bluish grey. We have also noted dark blue and nrownish cord pants. Cord shorts were also made in grenn, but we have not noticed the green shorts worn for school uniform.

Jackets

Some schools also adopted cord jackets. The jackets were made in the same cord material as the shorts. The jackets were often in blouson style, rather like an Eisenhowser jacket. They are short jackets cut to fall just slightly below the waist. They were quite different to a full length conventionally styled jacket. Usually the boys would wear these during normal school days and wear blazers for formal occasions. Many schools who had cord shorts did not have cord jackets. The schools that had jackets also had them in matching colors. Most of the jackets were grey or bluish grey, much less common was dark blue. The jackets we have seen all seem to have very similar design. There are two large front flap pockets.

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Created: 3:12 AM 7/20/2004
Last updated: 1:40 AM 8/13/2009