Figure 1.--This unidentified German boy was still wearing long stockings in the 1960s. We are guessing he probably lived in East Germany.

Long stockings disappeared very quickly during the late 1950s in West Germany. A few boys still wore long stockings in the 1960s, but it was not very common. We have few details here. The availavle photographic record , however, shows very few West German boys wearing log stockings during the 1960s. The timeline is somewhat diffeent in East Germany where boys wore long stocking well into the 1960s. (The same is true in other Eastern European countries and Russia.) While they were no longer very common in West Germany, we still see a few boys and girls wearing them. An example is unidentified German boy in 1962. One of the reasons that long stockings disappeared so rapidly is the appearance of commercial tights. Interestingly, many mothers began dressing their younger boys in tights at this time. Tights appeared at the same time in Britain and America, but were almost entirely worn by girls. The boy in the photograph here seems to be about 10 or 11 years old. Three details of this photograph are worth noteing. (1) The boy wears short socks on top of his long stockings, which we occasionally see in Germany. Double socks were not uncommon, two examples are archived in 1942 and 1957. (2) The Leibchen which this boy wears differs from many of the Leibchens we have seen in having supporters with the American-style button-and-metal-loop fasteners rather than the traditional buttons sewn onto the stocking tops. (3) The boy's shorts do not cover the tops of the stockings, thus exposing the fasteners of his garters. Some boys were embarrassed by this exposure, but others didn't care since everyone knew that supporters had to be worn with long stockings and were therefore not shy about it. A German reader writes, "Around 1960 long stockings were still worn but were being phased out because tights began to replace them. But tights were rarely worn by boys. Only a generation later––around 1975 or thereabouts––did tights hold sway for a short time. Today in 2006 there may be something like a revival of tights in some parts of Germany. But I am uncertain about this."