Figure 1.-- This class of primary students was taken in Switzerland during 1945, the final year of World War II. The children seem to be dressed quite informally. Most of the boys wear short trousers, long stockings, and knitted jerseys, but there is some variety.

We notice quite a number of Swiss boys wearing suspenders in available photographs. Our Swiss image archive is not large, so we can not yet develop chronological trends. A school portrait from 1945 shows quite a few of the boys wearing suspenders with a variety of pants. We notice both button and clip on suspenders, Much of Switzerland is German-speaking. Thus fashion trends in Germany often affect Switzeland. This German-speaking group of Swiss schoolboys in 1945 shows detachable suspenders being worn quite commonly with short pants. Some of the suspenders seem to be of the button-on type whereas other are of the clip-on variety (note especially the boys in the back row). These boys wear a mixture of trouser types: short trousers with long stockings are very common but so are the long ski-type pants gathered at the ankles. Both styles reflect the chilly weather in mountainous Switzerland, but we see both styles also in German school classes during the late 1930s and 1940s. One boy has a kind of bib long trousers with striped suspenders attached. Notice that the girls often wear pinafores and almost always wear long stockings. These children seem to be about 8 or 9 years old.