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Quite a number of German boys wore sailor suits with knicker pants. We nore realtively few German sailor suits with knicker trousers, but this is because our archive of 19th century German photographs is fairly limited. Knickers were very common with sailor suits in the 19th century, both regular knickers and bloomer knickers. Mostly we see boys with long pants, knee pants or shorts with sailor suits, but this is because our archive contains mostly 20th century images. Knickers with sailor suits were mostly worn before World War I. Here we see a boy with sailor suit knickers about 1910. We note button knee closures. A reader writes, "Maybe the button closure was the original reason for the later decorative buttons along the knee length trousers when they replaced what looks like in this image knee britches. The buttons then allowed the blousing affect around the leg and closed at the knee so it looked nicer." This is a good question. I have always thought that the buttons were a residual of 18th century knee breeches, but just why they became so common, we are unsure. We are less sure about the precise chronology, especially the chronology of regular and bloomer knickers. We so not have a lot of 19th century images and in those images it is not always possible to tell whether they are regular or bloomer knickers.
Quite a number of German boys wore sailor suits with knicker pants. We nore realtively few German sailor suits with knicker trousers, but this is because our archive of 19th century German photographs is fairly limited. Knickers were very common with sailor suits in the 19th century, both regular knickers and bloomer knickers. Mostly we see boys with long pants, knee pants or shorts with sailor suits, but this is because our archive contains mostly 20th century images. It thus is a little difficult to assess relative popularity.
As best we can tell, sailor suit knickers were primarily worn in the 19th century and the very early-20th century. We think that knickers were worn with sailor suits when they first appeared in the 1860s. Sailor suits did not become a major style umtil some later. We know they were popular by the 1880s and were a najor style by the 1890s. Throughtout this period we see boys wearing knickers as part of their sailor suits. Knickers with sailor suits were mostly worn before World War I. Here we see a boy with sailor suit knickers about 1910 (figure 1). We note button knee closures. A reader writes, "Maybe the button closure was the original reason for the later decorative buttons along the knee length trousers when they replaced what looks like in this image knee britches. The buttons then allowed the blousing affect around the leg and closed at the knee so it looked nicer." This is a good question. I have always thought that the buttons were a residual of 18th century knee breeches, but just why they became so common, we are unsure.
We are less sure about the precise chronology, especially the chronology of regular and bloomer knickers. We so not have a lot of 19th century images and in those images it is not always possible to tell whether they are regular or bloomer knickers.
We see some boys wearing sailor suit kniclers with socksz, usually three-quarter socks. Most commonly, however we see the boys wearing knickers with long stockings.
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