Figure 1.--Here we have a family snapshot. On the back is written "Nelson, Chris, Paige and Bill in front of Man O'War grave & monument 1958". We are not sure how to interpret this. The twin girls are dressed for church. The boys look like they are on vacation. The black knee socks look more for suits that for vacation. Perhaps the boys changed after church for a family outing and left their socks on. We are not sure about the circumstances.

Knee socks declined for boys even more in the 1950s. We do not see many examples in the photographic record of boys wearing knee socks during the 1950s. Many American boys by the 1950s had begun to regard knee socks as girls clothes because they were so commonly worn by girls. As a result, many boys did not want to wear them. And short pants were not very common, except for casual summer wear. And even during the summer many boys did not wear shorts. We do see shorts for boys on summer vacation trips with their patents, but here again, knee socks were not very common. The boys that did wear shorts during the summer rarely wore knee socks. A few college boys wore argyle knee socks with Bermuda shorts. We see some boys from affluent families wearing short pants with knee socks, but this was not very common. We see fewer boys wering the loud patteren knee socks such as argyles that were worn in the 1930s. Mostly we see dark colored knee socks. We think they were mostly worn with suits. An exception was college youth where Bermuda shorts were sometimes worn with Bermuda shorts. We see some Scouts wearing knee socks with the summer uniform. This was most common at camp. Fewer Cubs wore the short pants uniform, probably because camping was less common for the Cubs. We also see knee socls at ethnic events such as German events and Irish abd Scottish dancing.

Created: 9:05 AM 10/7/2010
Last updated: 9:05 AM 10/7/2010