Figure 1.--This portait of a little boy with his sisters is undated, but was probably taken in the late-1920s. Patterned knee socks are promarily associated with the 1930s, but we begin to see them in the late-1920s. By the late-20s we no longer see bits wearing above the knee knickers with knee sock. Th boy here is an exception, probably because of his age and the fact that he had sisters. We suspect that once he began school in learned about the coventions among boys. A reader asks abot the identity of the youngest child. Click on the image for a fuller discussion.

Knickers were no longer virtually universal as was the case in the 1910s. Boys also wore short pants anf long pants. We continue to see see a number of American boys with above the knee knickers and bare knees in the early-20s, a continuation of what see see in the late-1910s. This was not common, but we see some exampls. A good example is the boy on the previous page wearing a knickers suit in 1921. After the early/mid-20s we rarely see boys wearing above the knee knickers with their knees showing. An exception we noted was the younger boy here with his sisters which we noted in the late-1920s (figure 1). This was primarily because the boy was so young. This was not very common as we can see from school portraits. We notice two Florida boys wearing above-the-knee knickers, we think in the early-1920s. The only basic exception here was boys going barefoot, but this was becoming less popular.

Navigate the Historic Boys ' Clothing Web chronol ogical pages:
[The 1900s] [The 1910s] [The 1920s] [The 1930s] [The 1940s] [The 1950s]

Navigate the Historic Boys' Clothing Web style pages:
[Jackets] [Long pants suits] [Blazers] [Kilts] [S ailor suits] [Short pants suits]
[Ring bearer/page costumes] [Eton suits]

Created: 12:51 AM 6/14/2017
Last edited: 7:19 AM 6/14/2017