Figure 1.--The boys in this school class (we are not sure what kind of scgool this was) mostly wear short pants with kneesocks and long stockings. One boy wears knickers with long stockings. Most of the boys here wear long stockings, in part because it was winter. During the summer, many probably wore kneesocks. The photograph is undated, but we would guess the early 1930s. The image is a good example of the color of long stockings worn in the early 30sand assists with the color chronology. A reader writes, "The boys wear at least three colors of long stockings--black, dark brown, and tan. The three color tones seem to be about equally distributed. My guess is that photo would be dated about 1933-34. The boys seem to be about 11-12 years old."

Hosiery conventions only begin to become more established in the 1930s. They were somewhat affected by the type of pants a boy woreworn. We commonly see boys wearing short pants and they wore both kneesocks and long stockings. Almost all boys wore one of these two types of hosiery. We see many boys wearing long stockings in the early 30s, but this was much less common by the late-30s. We think the Hitler Youth program was a factor here. Boys joined the Hitler Youth at age 10. We rarely see boys wearing long stockings with the Hitler Youth uniform. Almost all boys belonged to the Hitler Youth by the late 30s. We are less sure about boys wearing knickers. We rarely see boys wearing ankle socks. Nor do we any longer see three-quarter socks. We are unsure what type of hosiery boys wore with lon pants. Most younger boys wore shorts, but by the lte 30s some were wearing long pants, especially during the winter. Some of these boys wore long stockings.

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Created: 12:05 AM 9/3/2007
Last updated: 12:05 AM 9/3/2007