Figure 1.--Here we see an American boy in 1934 wearing a button-on sailor suit with souble-strap cloed-toe sandals. The button-on outfits were fairly common. The sandals less so.

We note sandals being worn by boys in Europe and Britain. Sandals seem to have been especially common in England, but we notice tem in other countries as well. We note a German boy wearing single bar sandals about 1930. Younger boys might wear strap shoes, sometimes in red, with white socks. An example is a boy in Regents Park. School children were more likely to wear the "T"-strap style of school sandal. We also see Scottish boys wearing sandals. We note a family of Scottish brothers in 1932. Sandals were less common in America. where they were more commonly worn by girls. We do have a number of photographs of American boys wearing sandals, in part because our American archive is more extensive than that from other countries. We do note some American children wearing sandals for a dancing class. We see a boy we believe to be an American boy in 1931. And we note some portraits of younger boys wearing sandals. We note one young American boy wearing white double strap sandals about 1930. Here we see an American boy named Jimm in 1934 wearing double strap sandals (figure 1). We think seasonal and social class factors were involved here. While there are a number of such images, the vast majority of American boys wore shoes rathr than sandals. We do note one younger American boy in a rural school wearing sandals in 1939. We think that boys wearing sandals to school were especially unusual.

Created: 12:08 AM 7/23/2005
Last updated: 1:31 AM 4/4/2007