Belgian Boys Suits: Types of Pants--Short Pants

short pants suit
Figure 1.--This studio portarait shows an unidentifierd Belgian boy, perhaps 11-years old sitting for a formal portrait. He wearsc a light colored single-breasted suit with a dark tie. It is a short pants suit worn with argyle knee socks. The colors of the sock are very muted, not loud like some argyles. Theuare not turn-over-tops. Notice the gloves often worn for formal occassions in France and Belgium. The portrait is not dated, but we would guess were taken in the 1940s, in partb because the shorts are cut shorter than we gnerally see in the 1940s.

While knee pants were widely worn in the late-19th and early-20th century. short opants were a 29th century style. We know much more about the 20th century and are gradually building a sizeable archive. Every country has its little peculiarities in the developing photographic record. The Germans like the Americans and British took huge numbers of family snapshots which added to the more formal studio photography. There seem to be fewer Belgian snapshots avialble. Of course Belgium is a small country, but still there seem to be an unusually large numbr of formal studio portaits. At least that is what we have found to date. As a resut, we know a great deal about how boys dressed up and the suits they wore, at least for the 20th century. Short pants suits seem very common after World War I for boys through their early teens. At first they were long linke knee pants. For formality, boys still might wear knee pants suits. We also see boys wearing knicker suits, commonly teenagers in the inter-War era. Age conventions were a factor which also varied over time. Some older boys wore knicker suits. On the previous page we see a boy wearing a single breasted jacket and short pants in 1925. Here we see a boy wearing a double-breasted short pants suit, we think in the 1930s, but we are not sure (figure 1). Notice the popular Shiller collar and high top shoes. We notice two unidentified boys wearing single- and double-breasted jackets with short pants in 1933. Knee socks see very common with short pants suits, generally conservative solid color socks, but we note some argyles and other patterns as well. For especiallay formal occasions or famiklies which insisted on formality, long stockings were also worn. After World War II, especially by the 1960s we see more boys wearing long-pants suits, including some younger boys. Short pants suits seem to have remained more popular in Belgium than some other European countries, reflecting a conservative outlook of some parents.








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Created: 8:56 PM 10/19/2013
Last updated: 8:56 PM 10/19/2013